Midnight Nirvana
by thegr8sephiroth
Summary: “AU. Saving the world once was enough for Ex-General Sephiroth, too bad he has to do it again. Sequel to Twilight Perfection. SxA as before. Has nothing to do with the Twilight book series, so stop asking.
1. Chapter 1

Midnight Nirvana

FN: _Hey everybody, this James Firecat, I'm the one who wrote this story thegr8sephiroth is a good friend of mine, and he's the one who edited and posted it. A long time ago I armed with nothing but my quirky sense of humor, a rudimentary understanding of how the English language really worked, (not to mention how to spell some of the words that made it up) a few OCs based off of my best friends, and a desire to rewrite the plot of Final Fantasy Seven to cut down on the angst and make all the protagonists more badass wrote a story called Twilight Perfection._

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Twilight Perfection was another one of those stories where Sephiroth redeems himself as a hero, falls in mutually in love with Aeris, he protects her life, she protects his sanity, Sephiroth finds out Vincent is his father, and grows a pair of feathery wings (one white one black) while defeating Jenova in North Crater. After which Meteor gets blown up by Holy without doing any damage and the two (Aeris and Sephiroth) get married and move into to the house where she was born in Icicle Village._

_The main thing that set it apart from most of those fics were its OCs who insured that the few people who actually liked them greatly enjoyed the story since it gave a unique twist._

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Midnight Nirvana is the sequel direct sequel to Twilight Perfection (as opposed to "I've got No Beef With You" also posted by thegr8sephiroth) which is really more of a humerous aside, so prepare for more action adventure, and general all around badassery._

_Enjoy and make sure to leave reviews so that I can tell those of you who liked Twilight haven't forgotten about it since its way too long since we posted the last chapter to it._

**EN: My fault. Life happened. When it wasn't exams, it was computer problems or personal drama. Sometimes, it was all three at once. I offer you all a deal: review, and I'll keep momentum and something resembling an update schedule. Standard disclaimers about copyrights apply: we make no money off this, we're using less than half the cast, and the half we are using, we use with respect and appreciation for the people who created them.**

Chapter one: Up every morning just to keep a job. I gotta fight my way through the hustling mob.

Everyone was staring at him, but this was nothing unusual for former General Sephiroth Valentine. The fact that he had only fairly recently had the luck to have a retraction printed to his five years old (and some additional change now) obituary didn't help. Nor did the pair of wings growing from his shoulders (one white one black) impair the very obvious sense of "Holy crap, would you look at that" about him.

He had come from nowhere, been a no one, risen to the rank of general, vanished, come back, saved the world, and discretely vanished a second time. Getting away from the city of Midgar had probably been one of the smartest things he had ever done, and he knew that nothing short of utter insanity could ever bring him back to the damnable city.

Four months, four freaking months he told himself, if he had only been a little bit stronger he might have been able to hold out till she was too far along with their child to feel taking the trip from Icicle Village to Midgar. But he hadn't, Aeris had decided that it was time for her to personally get back in touch with her foster mother, and that was that.

Sephiroth, who had based his life around beating impossible odds by sheer force of will, had been dragged to the city of Midgar by his wife with ease. He had no desire to intrude on whatever Aeris was doing, his own family was complicated enough, he didn't want to even think about what he had married into.

"Hey Seph!" For some odd reason, Sephiroth found the rather high pitched (child like if you looked at it that way) voice reassuring because it proved that no matter what else happened, some things never changed. James Firecat, like always, was dressed in red, though he had traded his red jacket and t-shirt for what looked like a red Shinra major's uniform.

Sephiroth was unaware that major's uniforms came in red, or at least that particular cornea-scorchingly bright shade of red that James liked because it matched his hair and eyes. What in the name of the deities that Sephiroth didn't believe in James Firecat was doing as a Major in Shinra's army was explained quite well by the next greeting he received. "Hello Sephiroth, you'll be happy to know that Vincent won the Seraphim pool for how long it would take you to come back to Midgar. I thought you'd be able to hold out for another month at least."

Mirri Catwarrior wore the white jacket, with white bodysuit underneath and black long pants outfit that she had preferred since Sephiroth met her (though the jacket was a fairly new addition) but her white jacket boasted of a series of various markings, that made the rank she held in the Shinra army quite clear. "I wondered what would make you willing to work for Shinra again… general."

Mirri nodded as she pointed to the small golden plaque that sat across her desk. It read Mirri's view point on an age old maxim, "War is Heaven." She spoke with the confidence of a SOLDIER who had been given enough bad orders from above to feel cheated if she had left the service without the chance to give some herself.

"Yeah, as it turns out, retirement doesn't quite agree with me, not yet anyways. I burned a month in Corel helping with the rebuilding, and getting the mines operational again, then came out here. Besides, Sephiroth, you really had a lot to do with me getting this spot, you seemed to have killed the former holder of this position, along with every other possible candidate for it. As I distinctly remember myself saying after you vanished at Nibelheim 'what kind of outrageous jackass would have the audacity to try and replace Sephiroth' well now we have an answer, don't we?

By the way, thanks. Reeve might as well have been a rumpled and stained shirt, because when it came to contract negotiation I took him to the cleaners. Got concessions up one side of this building and down the other, some of which I asked for just to see if he'd agree to them. Granted, right at the top of the list was getting James his job."

Sephiroth was far from impressed. "Point one: I'm not sure if that's the dictionary definition of nepotism but it certainly fits the spirit. Point two: I'm pretty sure I made some rules against people being involved in relationships with anyone in the same chain of command as they were."

Mirri smiled sweetly, allowing her eyes to slide in her husband's direction. "Point one: we don't use chains, handcuffs, or whips, though James can do some impressive stuff with his tail. Point two: I rewrote that rule so that it's okay as long as the relationship could be proven to have existed before you joined up. It's good to be the general, after all.

By the way just because you might be interested in knowing another concession I got was that I can quit as soon as my nine months are up." Unlike Aeris, no matter how closely one looked, you could not find any signs of pregnancy about Mirri, and she was handling the task of being a General as if it was just a normal way to pass the time until her child was born.

Sephiroth prayed that he'd never be so transparent in his desire to discuss his children. "How is your child coming along by the way?"

Mirri sorted through a few papers on her desk before answering. "Oh she's coming along fine, though sometimes I feel that James is spending even more time with her then I do. By the way we've got a name now, Shiva."

The six armed cat goddess of destruction, it doubtlessly seemed a fitting name to Mirri. James seemed equally pleased with it along with his new position, he was taking every effort to try and keep in his new red uniform in order instead of letting it get scruffy like his former outfit.

His desk, of course, was another matter; if Mirri's looked appropriately muddled since she was in charge of Shinra's armies (what was left of them) James' looked simply disheveled. The only thing that stuck out was a golden plaque baring a slogan as appropriate for him as Mirri's was for her. "What is not forbidden is compulsory."

James attempted to shuffle some papers around like Mirri to make it look like he was accomplishing something other than just shoveling papers around. Eventually he gave up, just looked up at Sephiroth and smiled. "Yeah, three months in and I can already see that Shiva is going to have her mother's eyes."

Mirri snickered, her standard response to this line loud enough that anyone who wanted to could have herd. "Yeah, she's also going to have her father's ears and tail."

James Firecat and Mirri Catwarrior (well both of them could use Firecatwarrior for a last name now, he supposed) had been made for each other in spirit, and were thus determined to get over any differences in body. James was a former Shinra lab subject designed for commando work who had escaped, (mainly due to Sephiroth's help) and ended up meeting Mirri, and the two had instantly struck it off.

James was the kind of person who had a tendency to put women on pedestals, and Mirri was the kind of women who wanted to be above everyone else. The one problem was that James was not, when you got right down to it, human.

He was still wearing the wide brimmed red hat Mirri had gotten for him, and for a very good reason. James' ears resembled those of a cat, and he currently had a flaming tail suck down one of the legs of his apparently fireproof pants. To top it off, his hands were covered in a coat of short red fur, and his fingers bore retractable claws rather than fingernails. Because of the sheer amount of mangling that James' DNA had gone through (he joked that it had been created through cut and paste) it didn't line up chromosomally with Mirri's, or any other human beings for that matter. Never one to take "no" for an answer, Mirri had promptly commandeered the Shinra science department that had brought the world immortal super-soldiers and turned it into her private fertility clinic. It didn't hurt that she'd wrangled Melkore Morningstar, the man behind project Patchwork, and therefore the closest thing James had to a father, into overseeing the project.

So, project Keep Our Jobs ran swiftly and smoothly: they took DNA samples from both Mirri and James, then wrestled, pummeled, and occasionally bribed the respective strands until they lined up in a decent approximation of humanity.

Once they had accomplished that, they had taken one of Mirri's modified eggs, fertilized it with some of James' sperm, creating Mirri and James' child in much the same environment as James had been created.

Two scientists had come to the forefront of that project, it was another great victory for Melkore Morningstar, and the other person one of many reasons why Sephiroth had struggled to stay as far away from Midgar as possible. "You know Seph it's really cool how much your mom knows about genetics!" Mention of Sephiroth's mother was one of the few things he still dreaded, even in his new life.

It had all seemed so simple when his mother had been some unnamed dead scientist, and his father had been a man sadistic enough to experiment on his own child with the goal of making him into a living weapon. Sadly for Sephiroth, life was rarely simple, and having won the war to save the world from the evil alien entity Jenova, he discovered that the (uphill) fight against his natural response to flee whenever he and his parents were in the same room was probably going to be the thing that did kill him.

Vincent Valentine had been one of Shinra's best Turks up to the point that he had acquired, what he dubbed in his own words "A bad case of terminal anemia," or, in layman's terms, become a vampire.

He had also spent the first 30 years of Sephiroth's life lying in a coffin dealing with his own problems, which in all fairness were at the time close to being on par with Sephiroth's. Then Sephiroth had found him due to pure random chance (and James' unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the most impractical sort) and reintroduced him to the world.

At the time, Vincent also had some amnesia regarding the fact that he had been anything more then Lucrecia's partner in some consensual extramarital sex. Sephiroth of course had no idea that Vincent was his father, and the two had for a very short (and in retrospect very blissful) simply worked together rather than been family.

But as many times before, the planet had no particular concern for what Sephiroth cared to consider reality. Sephiroth had been forced to have that particular conversation with Vincent at a distance of several miles, and things had only gotten worse after that. Vincent, showing the traditional disregard for the rules that practically defined the Turks, decided that his particular brand of the afterlife was too enjoyable not to pass around.

On his way to helping Sephiroth destroy Jenova, Vincent had realized that he could bring Lucresia Levri, Sephiroth's mother, back to life. That had been a wonderful reason for Sephiroth not to go back to Midgar, nothing in his mind was worse then the possibility of a direct confrontation with his mother. He held onto this point of view like a drowning man did to a life preserver, despite the fact that everyone else seemed to be in agreement that his mother was a wonderful person.

It wasn't that Sephiroth was afraid of having a disagreement or something similar, just that he knew it would be painful for him one way or another. Thus he decided it was time to change the subject with a vengeance before James could warm into his ability to do more damage by accident than a battalion of First Class SOLDIERS could do on purpose. "So Mirri, how do you feel about finally having my job?" Mirri shrugged again as she looked through a few more pieces of papers.

"We're the problem Sephiroth, we're the solution. We made going to war against Shinra so popular that everyone wanted to get in on the show, and most of those jackasses didn't stop when we did. They weren't ideological or military based like us, they're mostly just idiots who think they can get ahead in life by cheating. We hit reactors, they hit banks, and some of them are still trying to. Of course it's thanks to your father and the Turks that we've bagged and tagged a number of them."

Sephiroth's face darkened into a suspicious scowl. The Turks were probably the most broken part of the broken system that Shinra had set up for itself. The fact that it was a power company rather than a government had done nothing to dissuade it from acting like it owned the world, and creating its own private army. The Turks had been created to clean up the messes that Shinra didn't want to give official attention to.

The only good thing about them was that as they had come to realize just how above the system they were, they had stopped really caring what the system had to say to them. Vincent had not been the most warped creation of that system, even after becoming a vampire, that honor rested solely on the near constantly shrugging shoulders of the man known (primarily) as Reno. He was slovenly, nearly always drunk, and possessed an almost freakish aptitude for violent improvisation and drunken ingenuity. Only his near-total lack of a work ethic kept him from being a serious danger to society.

Mirri, who had served as Sephiroth's left hand woman during the Wutai War and second in command during the Seraphim Rebellion, happened to be one of the few people on the Planet who had acquired enough time with Sephiroth to be able to understand his well concealed body language and saw his shock at her words. "Don't worry Sephiroth, Reeve has done a couple of things to limit the power of the Turks.

For one thing they're no longer super spies, just super cops. Unless they're invited, their power does not extend one foot outside of Midgar. Inside whose boarders it is still quite substantial of course. Also, Reeve increased the amount of paperwork that needs to be filled out every time they kill someone.

I agree with him on that notion, an appeal to their laziness is far more likely to succeeded then one to their morals." Sephiroth would lose a little less sleep now, not that he wanted to consider all of the various obvious comparisons between the New Shinra organization and the old one.

"What progress are you making concerning mako power?" For a couple of decades mako power had been the only power available, because it was cheap to produce, efficient, and dispensed by a company that had cornered the market. The only fly in the ointment was that under closer inspection it also involved sucking the essence of life itself right out of the planet. However, because of the fact that it had been in place for so long, even if Reeve "Shinra" wanted to get rid of it (and he did) if he did it straight away it would plunge humanity headlong into a new dark age.

Humanity had to be weaned off of mako power as other alternatives were found; doing anything else risked global collapse. The Shinra company was the exact same way, it was too large to be completely dismantled without doing irreparable damage to countless lives. So Reeve was only in charge on the Shinra organization in much the sense that you might be considered in charge if you were riding a tiger.

By the way Mirri smiled at him, Sephiroth could guess what the answer would be. "I'm sorry Sephiroth, but that information is classified. I can't exactly be giving it to every civilian who walks through the door to my office can I?" Part of Sephiroth was annoyed because it was the right answer, if you went by the book at least. The other part was that Mirri probably had taken classes in smirking, and acting like you cared about rules more than you really did.

In response Sephiroth held up the small black card he still had on his him, it was his Shinra ID and it still activated the elevators taking him to any floor he wanted to be. "If I'm just any civilian, how come I can walk in here without an appointment any time I please?" "Because you're a civilian who happens to be my friend." Sephiroth did not roll up his sleeves, he just looked Mirri right in the eyes spoke slowly and clearly. "Mirri if you don't tell me, I'll tell Reeve I'm ready to be a general again and after he gives me back my job, the first thing I'll do is bust you down to private so fast the sonic boom will shatter every window in this building. How does that sound, White Paws?"

"White Paws" was a nickname that had intrinsically gravitated towards Mirri, even though it had never truly caught on. It had been an offshoot of Mirri's other nickname, thanks to the fact that she had decided to start calling herself "Catwarrior" and the fact that she wore white gloves and white shoes. She had apparently ended up reminding someone of a cat whose fur broke into pure white just at the edges of its paws (she had worn a blue SOLDIER uniform at the time) and thus for a few months after newly becoming Seraphim she had occasionally been called by that alias. Sephiroth dragged out the name to remind Mirri that he wasn't the only one with skeletons in their closet.

Mirri raised both her hands into the air in surrender. "Jeez you civvies fight dirty when you're angry, must be because you've got no proper sense of military discipline. No need to bust out the middle name on me, you want the info, take it." Mirri opened a drawer on her desk to reveal well sorted files, (Sephiroth didn't want to think about what might be in a similar drawer unlucky enough to be part of James' desk) flipped to the letter "M" and removed a file handing it over to Sephiroth.

Sephiroth flipped through the file so quickly that someone who didn't know him better would think he was just gazing at it. In reality Sephiroth's brain had been designed to let it comprehend information much faster then normal, a skill as important in reading as on the battle. "I'd bet on wind power."

Mirri took the folder back and put it away before miming washing her hands. "Now remember that whatever happens, I didn't give you that information, even James isn't really supposed to know about it. Which naturally means that everybody who is anybody could have found out about it by buying Reno a couple of semi-ingestable beers. However, the conversation that we're having never happened, just like whatever didn't happen after we walked into the Temple of the Ancients.

All that said, I agree with you, wind power does have a lot going for it. It's simple, it can be used anywhere, and it's got minimal environmental impact. The down side is that it's chancy stuff, and we'll probably have to build a lot of them to provide the necessary power, which is more a matter of the space they'll take up than cost.

Still, I think they have more going for them than, say, solar. Of course I think Rocket Town and Junon are likely to be pushing for hydroelectric, since both are fairly near good sources of water. Corel is gonna be using coal of course, one way or another massive amounts of non-mako generated power is going to take its sweet time about coming around." Sephiroth nodded, it was going to be slow, but he didn't truly care; military campaigns took time, it was the result that really mattered.

"So what brought you here, Sephiroth?" Air raid sirens went of in Sephiroth's head, Mirri had a habit of prying, and had unfortunately grown quite good at it. He needed to take time to carefully plan his response. Unfortunately, Mirri didn't seem to be in the mood to give him that time. "Because you and I both know that you wouldn't have come back because you wanted to." Artillery started pounding away, Mirri already knew too much, he had to act now!

"This and that Mirri. Aeris is visiting her family." Mirri kicked her smirk into high gear. "Oh, so she dragged you here by the ear, or I suppose by the wing might be a more appropriate phrase." Rather than focus on the fact that Sephiroth Valentine, a man who had killed countless people basically did what his wife told him to do (Mirri might (but then that was a low chance sadly) have a heart attack and die from too much joy) Sephiroth chose something else to talk about.

"So what's with the little brass plaques? Yours and James' have been the only ones I've stopped to read, but I saw one on even the secretary's desk as I walked by." Mirri stood up, walked around and leaned back, her hands resting near the plaque. "They started springing up about a month ago. When Reno got his old position back, he walked in and slammed down a plaque on his desk saying 'I may come to work drunk, but you're the company that refuses to fire me!' After that, well, it spread through the company faster then a bad cold, Reeve approves because it helps new employees learn the ropes, or at least learn any persons' personality from a quick glance at their desk."

This explanation was followed by the five most dangerous words that Sephiroth could have heard Mirri say in this situation. "But getting back to you, Sephiroth correct me if I'm wrong, you're letting Aeris visit her parents, alone. So that alone, she can tell them: she's a lycanthrope, she got married, she's pregnant, and that her husband has wings. How exactly do you plan to survive the part where they chase you down with a shotgun?"

A few months ago Sephiroth would have simply ignored the question. However, he was willing to admit that overall spending time with Aeris had been good for him mentally, which was why he responded with a joke of his own. "Well Mirri, I plan to get a running start on the roof of the Shinra building, then leap off and use my wings to glide all the way to Kalm." Mirri flashed Sephiroth a smile that managed to combine her temporary surrender and her congratulations to him.

Sephiroth pressed for more since he had a temporary advantage, just like he would do in any battle. "You can smirk all you want Mirri, I just hope you get down on your knees and thank whatever particular deity you believe in that your parents are dead or else the universe might bring them back to life just to spite you. Or you might find out that Shinra stole James from an ordinary pair of parents to experiment on him the same way they did with me. Then you would be in the exact same boat as I am, and since I'm apparently the captain of the S.N.S. Parental Issues believe me when I say we're currently attempting to make more holes to let out the water coming in through the ones we already have."

In retrospect there were all sorts of wrong things with what Sephiroth had just done, one big one being suggesting within earshot (granted that was a pretty big area) of James that he might have parents because Sephiroth knew he would have torn Midgar apart a brick at a time looking for them. Thankfully before Sephiroth could spend any more time to ponder his mistakes, Mirri broke into a round of applause.

Sephiroth was struck as still as a statue while Mirri finally finished clapping and like an announcer at a sporting mach explained her reasons. "Wasn't that just lovely ladies and gentlemen? We have Sephiroth Valentine actually getting into contact with his emotions, and making a joke! That's the kind emotional release that good relationships are built on! Let's give him another big hand, he's been wonderful folks!"

James joined in with Mirri as she began her second round of applause. Sephiroth's traditional glare did nothing to silence Mirri, she had hit her stride and was now thoroughly enjoying herself. "You know Mirri it's traditional to have both the bride and the groom wearing the same kind of stone on their rings, and wear them on the same hands."

That managed to at least get Mirri to stop applauding and shot Sephiroth a nasty glare of her own. On the ring finger of Mirri's right hand she wore a fancy ring supporting a large white gemstone. James on the other hand wore his ring on the ring finger of his left hand with a red gemstone on his. James, eager to participate in the conversation, quickly explained.

"You have to wear materia bracers on your dominant hand for them to work correctly, don't you know that Sephiroth? Because it's one of the first things I remember ever learning about materia from the scientists. So you being, well the great Sephiroth, I would figure that you would have to..." Sephiroth momentarily tuned out James' voice as he took another look at his and Mirri's "rings". Upon closer examination, they proved to be just what James had said they were.

Those markings which in Mirri's favor did do a perfect job of passing for just the standard designs you might see on any wedding ring were actually the marks you needed to focus the power of a materia. Of course like Sephiroth both James and Mirri had bought rings big enough to wear on top of gloves (as they wore their gloves for reasons arguably more important than Sephiroth wore his) which also took care of the important need of not having a socketed materia holder touch your bare skin.

That was the second lesson Sephiroth had learned about Materia, if the socketed materia holding item touched your bare skin then the materia might cast any spell you used it for directly on you, not a problem for healing materia but with summon and other attack materia it was a big deal indeed. Of course there were ways around it, you wore long sleeves to clip your bracelets over, and if your materia was socketed in your blade (as Sephiroth's was) it was safe to use as long as you held the sword by the hilt.

Mirri had just found another way to do it, sacrilegious though it may have seemed to some. Mirri looked at James reproachfully and then shrugged. "Well thanks to my husband, that cat is rather out of the bag. That thing on James' hand is a new Knights of Round materia, James isn't very good with magic so he can only use it once a day, but that thing has enough power to blast apart a city block."

Sephiroth shuddered, there were only a few Knights of Round materia out there in the world, and Shinra was keeping close tabs on them all. Most of the materia were locked away in Shinra vaults, both the mastered orbs and the new ones they generated. This was a good thing, because Knights of Round wasn't so much one summon as it was 13, and he could think of no worse person to be wearing that particular materia for mock jewelry than James Firecat.

Which left of the question open of where exactly Mirri had found a materia that could pass for a white gemsto- oh, shit... "Don't tell me that Aeris..." Mirri's smile was so smug that it was painful to be in the same room as. "What? When she summoned Holy she mastered the White Materia, and what to do with the offshoot it created was up to her. Seeing as I gave her the white Materia, she gave this one to me."

Sephiroth had already had one argument with Aeris over how chancy using the White Materia had been, he did not want to have another one with Mirri. "Please tell me you can't use that thing." She shouldn't have been able to, the White Materia was a powerful Cetra creation, that required Cetra hands to use. "If you mean I can't summon Holy, yes." Sephiroth felt his spirits slowly start to rise.

"But I've found that I can do all sorts of neat tricks with it, would you like to see?" And then instantly felt his sprits plummet, and it had a long way to fall. "All sorts of neat tricks" coming out of the mouth of Mirri Catwarrior could only mean that the materia she wore could do at least as much damage as James'.

"Dare I ask how you can even use it when you're a human?" Mirri crossed her arms indignantly at Sephiroth, letting him get a good look at the White Materia she was wearing. "Sephiroth, you've never gotten over the trauma of your own birth. You can't help but think that the entire world revolves around who your parents were. The White Materia is a rock, it can't tell who the parents of the person holding it are any more than it knows the name of the person using it.

The reason only a Cetra can use it is because it requires a lot of magic, more than any normal human has, more than even Alex has at least if you consider our magic and his Gnosis different things, which they look to be. Aeris was able to use it to summon Holy since she had a lot of magic in her because she was half Cetra from a bloodline which apparently had a lot of magical power in it, your getting cause and effect mixed up. I don't have that much power, but Holy isn't the only spell this materia can cast."

Sephiroth looked Mirri straight in the eye and spoke slowly. "You're using it just so that you can see the look on peoples faces now that everyone knows you have blades up your gloves." Mirri's reply was instantaneous. "Guilty as charged." Mirri went back to sorting a few more papers on her desk, and then looked at the clock on the wall, before looking back at Sephiroth.

"As enlightening as this conversation is Sephiroth, me and James have places to be and things to do fairly soon. Unless you would like to join us?" Sephiroth cast his own look at the clock, it was only 4:00, and if he was back at the hotel he and Aeris were staying in when she got back, she would probably drag him outside to meet her family. Which meant that he needed to kill time, and do so with a vengeance.

"If you're offering, I'll accept."

"Wonderful! Of course since it's a military operation you'll have to hold some sort of rank. But we can sort the paperwork dealing with that later, Private Sephiroth." Sephiroth idly wondered how hard it would be to keep Aeris from finding out if he set Mirri's desk on fire and threw it at her.

End Chapter


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two: Here I am, doing everything I can, pretending I'm a superman.

"If you had told me Melkore was coming along I would have turned you down." "Which is exactly why I didn't tell you." Mirri and Sephiroth had the quick conversation in barely audible whispers as the subject of it was not so far away from them.

Doctor Melkore stood roughly 5'7", and his blue eyes bore the mako glow that seemed a prerequisite for any success in old Shinra. His primary concession to personal grooming was giving his face a quick shave every morning; other than that, he let his fingernails grow until they broke and left his hair alone entirely. As such his brown wavy hair had a tendency to assume a style and length more frequently associated with rock stars than scientists. He had recently decided to give the lab coat he wore for all occasions its annual wash, thus clearing away the blood and oil stains which had accumulated on it over the months. He was widely considered to be one of the most useful persons you could ever meet, and also the most annoying.

Melkore's casual lechery combined with that assessment to make him fairly unsuccessful with women, but he had developed a tendency to treat the weapons he made as substitutes for the children he would probably never have. This was good, in the sense that it made you sure you got a weapon that was top of the line in every way imaginable, and bad, because occasionally Melkore would drop in just to check on your weapon, as if you had married his daughter rather than just bought a gun from him.

To put it simply, Melkore was brilliant at making weapons, but because he knew it, he subsequently had no desire to rein in his tremendous ego. The fact that his status as a celebrity had helped him actually establish a beachhead from which to attack the problem of romance (or in laymen's terms, meet a girl and go on a few dates with her) had only exacerbated the problem. Worst of all, (for anyone dealing with him) Melkore had recently been given the position that he had wanted all his life at Shinra, he was finally in charge of weapons development, able to work on weapons anyway he wanted and delegate more menial tasks down the chain of command.

All this added up to give Melkore not only a sense that he was king of the world, but that the entire galaxy was starting to revolve around him as well. Though Mirri assured Sephiroth there was a way to instantly puncture his overinflated ego, she didn't feel like sharing it with him at the moment. It may have helped that Melkore was currently helping James hold the huge jug that contained the materials they would need for the mission.

"Do you realize how insane this is?" "What's the matter, Sephiroth, wings tucked in too tight?" Mirri's jibe would not have been nearly so hard for Sephiroth to take if it hadn't been true. Useful as his wings were for the strictly utilitarian task of flight, they were also highly conspicuous. Since he had yet to successfully retract them into his body simply by willing it so, he was indeed concealing them under his clothing.

It was less than enjoyable of course, much like tucking his silver hair into the collar of any outfit he wore that was reasonably loose, but he did it for the same reason. Sephiroth's silver hair might be a wonderful thing for people trying to make a hero out of him, but it also made him very, very, recognizable. Even with it tucked in, enough of it was visible that, between it and his eyes, any attempt at avoiding recognition was analogous to shouting at a deaf man.

The wings were even worse, and feathers, muscle and bone resist confinement much more stridently than hair does. Reflecting on the painful cramps in his wings and the homicidal feelings they were engendering would have given Sephiroth far greater sympathy for women in general were he not currently trying so hard to resist throttling a specific sarcastic smirking specimen of the sex.

"What is Melkore doing here anyway? Didn't you said this was a military operation?" Mirri shrugged, indicating that she hadn't invited Melkore, which was quite obvious to Sephiroth anyway. "He came because he was tired of getting broken or busted equipment shipped back to his lab. He can't tell us anything worth knowing from it so he decided the best way to make sure that things got done well was to do them himself."

A good principle in theory, but Melkore had a history of doing bad things with good principles. Like what Sephiroth could see him and James about to do now. "This had better work. If nothing happens then I'd rather have spent today running from my new relatives than letting people stare at me like a freak show exhibit." Mirri was less than sympathetic, but then, she didn't have wings growing out of her back to worry about.

"Not a freak show, more like a stand up comedy routine. I mean this is one of the oldest ones in the books. Oh sure, the people behind us are probably going to hate us for the rest of their lives but I can bet that everyone else is going to be cheering us on. Which is all a moot point, as we're working on ironclad intel. I got the info straight from Vincent, and he's double, triple and quadruple-checked everything from your paternity test onward."

Sephiroth gave Shinra's newest general a scowl that could ignite ice. "Mirri if you ever feel the desire to use my family as a basis for jokes again, allow me to remind you that I've killed people for less personal reasons." Mirri giggled, sounding like an immature school girl before she got regained control of herself. "Well aren't we getting in touch with your Wutain samurai side, next thing you know you'll be bowing to opponents in single combat before you kill them."

Sephiroth kicked the glare up a notch, and Mirri paled a little despite herself. "In my defense, he does have the blood tests that prove he's your father framed and hung in his office, you could go see yourself if you don't believe me."

Sephiroth let his scowl dissipate into a tired sigh; that sounded like exactly the sort of thing Vincent would do. He was saved from the conversation by James and Melkore's arrival at the front of the line.

"Hello, my name is Frodrick Fronkenstien, and I've come all the way from Cosmo Canyon. I've been instructed to open a bank account here, and for that reason my assistant, Mr. Renfield, has brought this entire jug of one gil coins!"

At that point James unscrewed the lid and casually deposited a veritable mountain of coins before the teller. Sephiroth had to resist the urge to smile, because it would have proved Mirri right, in truth there was something indefinably amusing about the look in the teller's eyes. "Sir, you'll have to count those before you can deposit them."

Melkore and James exchanged glances, Melkore's of feigned indignation, James' of pretending to be afraid of Melkore's reproach. It was an easy sell for James, because Melkore was one of the few people he actual did sort of respect. "Fine then, we'll count them right here, if this is what passes for civility!" His threat made, Melkore and James instantly started to enact it.

Between the two of them they divided the mountain in half and began to count it aloud, much to the anger of everyone present, though it seemed to strike a particular nerve for three people in particular. They were all dressed as normally as anyone else, but from inside their jackets, they produced assault rifles. Sephiroth and everyone else instantly got to see how the rifles had been altered to be more easily concealed, and it had been done well.

Brandishing their weapons one of the men instantly shot the bank's security camera. The leader of the trio pointed his weapon down range at the bank tellers. "F***ing idiots! Hand over all your money or else..." Sadly no one present would discover exactly what threats the man was going to make, because in the blink of an eye James stopped counting coins, and spun around.

The deadly monowire concealed within his gloves was clenched in his fists and ready to be put to use in an instant. With the supreme ease of an expert magician pulling a tablecloth from under a full dinner service, James' dexterous fingers manipulated his weapon of choice. To most people James' monowire looked exactly like the garrotte wire that was used only by experts (either criminal or military) to help expedite the process of choking a foe.

James' monowire, having been designed by Melkore Morningstar himself was, like most of Melkore's creations, even deadlier than it looked. The wire's edge was filed sharper than a razor's edge.

It easily sliced right through the barrels of the three men's weapons, who didn't even see it happen, or realize anything was wrong until their weapons fell apart. By that point the monowire was back in James' gloves, and Mirri and Sephiroth (the former flashing a Shinra ID card with her rank as general quite evident on it) were leading the men out, and one look from Sephiroth made quite plain the folly of trying to resist.

----

Melkore's lab had once belonged to a scientist named Simon Hojo, whose single redeeming feature was that he had been resilient enough to be "killed" several times over. As it was, spending even the smallest amount of time in this place brought feelings of paranoia and claustrophobia to the forefront of Sephiroth's mind no matter how hard he tried to force them down.

Sadly this room had not been high enough up in the 70 story monstrosity that was Shinra HQ to have been wiped out by Diamond WEAPON. So Melkore had simply done everything he could with the place, and, to be fair, it no longer looked like the Marquis de Sade's sitting room.

What it did look like was the lab belonging to the villain from a bad spy movie, and was suitably littered with all the weaponry you might ever need to either conquer a small country or hold the entire world hostage. Needless to say, Sephiroth didn't mind that so much as someone else might have, with this place any change was a big improvement.

At the moment Melkore was busily doing a dissection of the three assault weapons, granted dissection might have been the wrong term as James had already given them one by separating their barrels from their chambers, 'autopsy' might have been more appropriate. He was busily taking the pieces apart and studying each and every single thing about the guns. This was chiefly because of the contents of the guns' chambers. The bullets were spread out over the table that he was sitting at, and they glowed a slightly luminescent green.

Mako bullets were widely considered the top of the line regardless of who you asked. Chiefly this was because the residual mako poisoning left over from being shot with one would probably kill a person even if the bullet hole itself didn't. Even worse, the bullets had the ability to repress the healing abilities granted to SOLDIERS, which meant that Shinra kept such weaponry under tight wraps, or at least it had.

During the first month after Meteor hit, Shinra had more or less undergone the amputation of a limb to save a life, and multiple things had been lost in the process. Not the least of which were seasoned veterans with weapons that shouldn't have gotten out among the public. Still, the fact that idiots like those three were using mako bullets was a very bad sign.

Melkore looked up at Sephiroth from his work, not enjoying the examination of his examination. "There you go Sephiroth, that's all I have to show anyone. I don't know why Mirri even let you in here, but there it is. Look at it as long as you like, I have a board meeting to attend."

With that Melkore turned and headed for the elevator, leaving Sephiroth alone with the mystery of where the mako bullets had come from. Sephiroth knew where he would probably be most likely to find some answers for the questions he had, but before he approached the elevator himself he wondered if it was worth the cost.

----

Reeve "Shinra" mentally wondered what it was about the company he had now come into possession of that attracted people with questionable morals to it. After all, as of this particular moment he had been with the organization through an otherwise unprecedented three presidents, Reeve could admit to himself that all three had only one thing in common: putting people into positions of power who seemed to be an absolute genius at business, despite being more or less certifiably insane.

Reeve himself was that third president of Shinra, and he had found much (make that just) as he had expected, that the view from the top of the garbage heap was no more enjoyable than from any other part of it. He could distinctly remembering turning down an offer to hold the position he now did, and it had been one of the smartest things he had ever done. Just about every single problem he had imaged besetting him as president had already risen its head in his first few months on the job.

The one bright spot was that at least so far no one had tried to drive a sword through his chest. Still, much as he had expected being president of Shinra didn't mean that you ran the world and could do anything wanted, at least not in the long run. What it meant was that you spent all your time trying to keep the world going ahead and knew that if anything went wrong you would be blamed.

As he looked around the room, he reflected on what an odd collection of people he was now working with. Mirri "Catwarrior" Lufkin, was a clear improvement on her predecessor, "General" Heidegger, by virtue of having actual military experience. Unfortunately, she also bore a stereotypically cavalier attitude in regards to where the pieces fell when you were done blowing them up.

Moving around the table you had Lucretia Valentine who was said to more or less live in the Shinra building, but Reeve knew better, she did flat out actually live in the building. Vincent Valentine had made that point abundantly clear, and done so while looking down the barrel of a rifle with the business end of it pointed at Reeve. If anyone ever needed proof of just how little actual power a president had, Reeve had gotten it on day one, thanks to a conversation with a certain Mr. Valentine.

Vincent had not asked for the job as head of the Turks, he had taken it. To be fair, he was the most qualified person for the position, but that didn't mean Reeve had enjoyed his "job interview" as it had been remarkably similar to discovering that you owed a loan shark money, and unless you did what he wanted he would break your legs, chop them off, and then sell them on the black market to make up the money you had lost him.

That was how Reeve's presidency had started, with him becoming a victim of coercion via brute force, and he had no doubt that it would continue in a similar vein. As noted, both Vincent and Lucresia lived in the Shirna building, and they did so for a very good reason, they were both vampires. As it was, Vincent hadn't needed to threaten Reeve over the issue of making Lucresia head of the Shinra science department, there really hadn't been much choice in the matter(Something about the fact that very few scientists were left on Shinra's payroll, as all the others seemed to have died, almost never from natural causes).

.

Granted, Lucrecia was "alive" by unnatural causes, but that still made her employable. Of course, her eyes had adopted the same blood red hue as Vincent's, and she had opted for a new labcoat in the same shade. While this did make Reeve a bit uncomfortable sitting next to her, it paled before a room full of people who a few months previously would have been quite willing to kill him.

Take Melkore Morningstar, head of Shinra weapons research for example, now known world wide as the man who had invented the Mako Cannon, a weapon without which the world might have been destroyed.

There was simply something unsettling about a man who built a minigun into a guitar, mainly because you never knew for sure if anything in his hands was a deadly weapon or not. Also there was James Firecat, who was sitting there in his position as second in command of Shinra's military might, and that was certainly a thought designed to give one many nightmares.

This was largely because James Firecat happened to have the general laid back personality of a pacifist, except without the strict moral objection to killing. The fact that he also happened to be married to Mirri (nepotism was not just alive and well in Shinra, it had never died) made Reeve assured of one thing. He was a very small mouse, sitting at a table with a bunch of cats and claiming to be "president" of the world.

The only reason he had ended up with the job was because the table's other occupants had come up with better alibis. Mirri not being a native of Midgar, had claimed that with her strong ties to Corel nobody would have accepted her as president. James Firecat needed no alibi, one minute spent in his company would convince anyone of his unsuitability for the job.

Melkore Morningstar had pointed out that he was a touch more widely known for his small shop (Melkore's Munitions) than he was for any particular ability to manage large organizations. Vincent had been quite quick to point out that, you rather had to be alive to be President, otherwise he could never hope to have a heir to pass the company on to. Had Vincent not been holding a loaded rifle pointed at Reeve's head when he said this, Reeve might have pointed out that Vincent already had an heir.

Of course Sephiroth Valentine would have been the perfect candidate for president; if he wasn't exactly born in Midgar, he was close enough to it, and wildly loved by the people of Midgar. That was why Sephiroth had vanished off the face of the planet before the ink on his pardon had dried, he knew better than to become a president.

Because Reeve happened to be the last Shinra board member alive, he had become president by the virtue of being in the right place at the wrong time. He had become president, and now every single board meeting he couldn't help but feel like all it would take was a single order from Sephiroth to have all his department heads instantly pull out lethal weapons (or in Mirri and James' case they were already wearing them) and reduce Reeve's body to a pile of misshapen bleeding lumps.

"So, do you mind if I call this meeting to order?" There was acquiescence from everyone present. The sad thing about the board meeting was that the one person who wasn't directly linked to the Seraphim rebellion was Brain Lane, Melkore's senior assistant.

He had been Melkore's assistant during the Wutaian War. His sandy brown hair and soft blue eyes gave him a tranquil look that probably let him work well with Melkore. Though Reeve had never bothered to spend the time confirming it, he had heard that Brian and Melkore had once played the lead roles in their college production of The Producers. It had required no great skill to see who was Max and who was Leo.

The fact that the person who was most removed from the Seraphim Rebellion was one who had worked closely for one of its members was proof of just how low that particular bar was set.

"We're all ears Reeve, shoot." It was nice of James Firecat not to wear a hat to the Shinra board meetings, but as his ears had a way of drawing more attention than was needed, leaving Reeve wished he would wear one just like he did everywhere else. "Very well then, let's get down to the subject of what we found out during the mission."

----

The Turk's office was widely known as the Gates to Hell for two reasons. The first was that many people that entered it were never seen again. The second was that you could find anything you were looking for in there, but you would probably regret the price you paid for getting your hands on it in the long run. That hadn't changed in the slightest with the rise of New Shinra, and it probably never would.

At the moment Vincent Valentine sat behind his desk looking quite content with himself. The plaque on his desk read "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down!" or at least that's what it said give or take a few more lines that didn't deviate from the original. Sephiroth looked at Vincent, and Vincent raised a single hand in greeting. "Hey Seph." There were only three people in the world, who Sephiroth let call him "Seph".

The first was James Firecat because he paid about as much attention to what someone wanted to be called, as Reno did to the rules about no getting drunk before (or during, or after) missions. The second was Aeris, because arguing over nicknames was a sure way to sleep on the couch. Vincent was the third because he was Sephiroth's father, and the roundabout way in which they had discovered that had bred a certain informality into their relationship.

There might eventually be a fourth person if Sephiroth ever had a long face-to-face discussion with his mother, but he doubted it would ever be an issue because Sephiroth knew the ventilation system of Shinra HQ like the back of his hand. Sephiroth didn't bother to raise his own hand in greeting, he just walked right up to his father's desk. "Hello Vincent, I've been out of the loop for a few months, and I need to find out a few things. Talk to me about Wutai."

----

Melkore showed a bunch of charts that probably only made sense to him and then, confident that he had established one simple fact (I have a higher IQ than any of you), he finally addressed the issue in accessible terms.

"Now then, let's talk about the bullets, since I'm sure that what everyone here cares about. While I'm not saying that we haven't lost track of plenty of bullets or make over the last few months, judging from the fact that these guys were clearly not expecting to have to deal with SOLDIERS, I can only come to one conclusion. Given the sheer relative unimportance of their task, whoever sent these guys, or at the very least, whoever's supplying them, has their own mako reactor."

----

Vincent looked up at Sephiroth and shrugged. "What about Wutai?" The two sized each other up very carefully after Sephiroth's question. They both knew that Vincent was Wutaian, and thus Sephiroth was half Wutaian, which was slightly ironic as Sephiroth had lead Shinra's efforts in the war against Wutai. "Tell me everything we have on how they've been acting after Meteor."

Unlike Mirri, Vincent didn't put up a struggle over information, after all, for him it was still keeping it in the family. "I'm not the best person for that as I've been out of the game for 30 years, but here's what I've got. After the war Wutai made like a turtle and pulled itself back into its shell to hide from things getting worse. Basically they just went along with whatever they were told to do. After Meteor, well they'd have to be fools not to have sensed the shifting the wind, and as I'm sure your aware, Lord Godo may be old, but he isn't a fool."

Sephiroth nodded, Lord Godo had commanded the Wutaian armies in the field to a string of victories over better equipped, more numerous Shinra armies under various commands. Then a new and very young general had come along, and the other shoe had dropped, Sephiroth had finally made use of Shinra's supplies to their greatest abilities. "So, how are they reacting to New Shinra?"

Much like Sephiroth, Vincent held little respect for documents, preferring to trust his own memory. "About the same as everyone is. They'll take while the taking is good. It's sad, but Wutai would be stupid not to take advantage of the fact that we're a friendlier, nicer, non-genocidal Shinra, and I've already touched on how they aren't mentally deficient." Sephiroth put a hand down on Vincent's desk. It was sad, but you couldn't be a general in Shinra without learning something about politics. "It all comes down to power."

----

That was a very, very painful idea for Reeve to swallow. "Someone else has a mako power plant going?" Shit, that was one of the few things that could possibly have gone wrong but doubtlessly shouldn't have. You would think that the draconian way that Shinra had stamped out competition should have prevented anyone else from setting themselves up with their own private mako reactor.

"Would you people mind telling me how that could be possible?" The answer startlingly came from the last person that Reeve would have expected it from, James Firecat. "Well, mako power is actually a lot simpler than most people think it is. I mean the "womb" I was made in, the thing we've got going that Shiva is in, that's really nothing more than a miniature reactor. All you need is a drill for breaking through the surface of the planet, and a siphon for getting the Lifestream out. Then it has to be taken to somewhere when it can be distilled from lifestream to mako, but that kind of thing is all over the place."

Brian pondered a moment before stepping in. "Shinra keeps tabs on places and technology needed to derive power from mako, but not the equipment for extracting and distilling it." Melkore cast an irritated glance at Brian. Brian had been working far more closely with Shinra for the last ten years than Melkore had until now, thus giving him a better knowledge of such bureaucratic practices.

"Okay then Brian, since apparently you know what's going on, how do we find them?" Brian shrank back from Melkore's glare, but pressed on all the same. "I hate to bring up ghosts of the past, because I remember hearing these words said here in another much darker context when I was working for former director Scarlet, but none the less, I guess I'll just have to say them, we need a Cetra."

----

"Power?" "Power, Vincent." The thoughts had already been kicked around in Sephiroth's head so many times prior to this event that he practically memorized what he would say. "We've been monitoring the size of Wutai's army, but we haven't done anything concerning their power base, whatever it consists of." Vincent opened a section of his desk and pulled out a stack of papers.

"You're telling me? These files are an insult to the trees that were cut down to make them. If you believe what these things say, they don't have anything past the water wheel." Sephiroth nodded as Vincent put the files away. "Any idiot knows they didn't put up as good of a fight as they did without some kind of manufacturing."

-----

Lucresia Valentine might find it humorous, but Reeve didn't, he had also been present when those words had been spoken beforehand. "I agree with you in spirit Brian, a Cetra's ability to detect the rips in the planet that drilling for mako inevitably creates would make them ideal for our purposes. However, I hardly believe that now is a good time to go out and try to capture a Cetra."

Mirri surprisingly wasn't endorsing the military option this time around. "Who's talking about capturing? We didn't stage the Seraphim Rebellion without getting a couple of people to owe us favors, including Cetra. If you give me time for one trip to lower Midgar I can bring a Cetra back with me."

----

Power was an easy thing to talk about. The next issue was harder. "There's something else about Wutai that bothers me, sooner or later Godo is going to die, and when he does, it'll be bad news for everyone involved." Vincent smiled, showing his pointed canines. "Yes, you did rather kill off the rest of his family."

As a general Sephiroth was less than sentimental about death, but he was outpaced in sheer sanguinity by Vincent, who had been a Turk first and then a vampire, which meant he ended up viewing death as natures best joke. "I didn't kill them directly and you know that. His pregnant wife died of a combination of shock, heartbreak, and complications involved with childbirth." It wasn't that Sephiroth had a direct problem with being accused of killing someone, but hell if he would let the accusation stand for someone he hadn't actually killed. "I know, I know, and if you want me to take a random guess about what will happen after Godo dies, it's just that Wutai is going to be in trouble. The nobles are probably going to start fighting each other over who gets to be in charge. One big civil war on one very tiny island."

Now that was just a lovely thought. "So basically, we're looking at Wutai going straight to hell, unless he finds someone to be his heir." Vincent and Sephiroth looked at each other, and shuddered as they both had the same brand of thoughts. "The problem being that Wutai doesn't have anyone who they could unite behind."

Vincent reached under his desk and pulled out a bottle of beer. Then he gave on decisive twist to open the bottle. He didn't even need to look over his shoulder as he spoke. "Hey Reno, do you think you could get James to look like he was a Wutain?" Just as Vincent suspected, the sound of a alcohol being opened had attracted his second in command's attention like a moth to a flame.

"Well boss, we would have to paint his hair and ears black, which James wouldn't like much, but if you asked Catwarrior she could probably convince him to do it. On second thought, scrap painting the ears back, I don't think that what color his cat ears are will really make a difference. We might have to do some minor plastic surgery on him, and Catwarrior really wouldn't like that, but then we might be able to get away with a facemask and really good wig instead. After that we'd need to teach him the language, and the walk, maybe inside two weeks given a really intensive course." Sephiroth recoiled, his cool façade cracking. "You want to use James?"

---

While 70 floors above, people talked about finding a Cetra, little did they know that below them a Cetra was already going about the process of delivering itself right into their laps. The huge silver wolf ran through the streets of Midgar with the impunity of a god. Much as it expected, people quickly got out of its way rather than trying to stand before something that probably could slam them to the ground and then keep going without even breaking its stride. Size wasn't the only thing unusual about the wolf, its intelligence was beyond normal lupine standards as well.

It stopped at the door to Shinra HQ, got up on its hind legs, and used its front ones to push the glass door open. Then it was back on all fours, it raced through the lobby of the building, drawing a very odd look from the receptionist. Clerks ducked to the side as he wolf approached the elevator, and pushed the "up" button with its nose. Then, as calmly as anyone else, the wolf waited for the elevator.

The door eventually opened with a slight "bing" and a very surprised person got out after the wolf was kind enough to step to the side slightly. Then the wolf was back in, and he pushed the button for floor 65. At least he tried to, given the size of the wolf's pads and the fact that it couldn't retract its claws, it ended up pushing buttons 66, 65, and 64. As the wolf slowly sunk to the ground, it let out something between a high pitched wine of displeasure and a growl of anger.

Thankfully, by whatever luck the universe ran on, nobody else needed a ride on this particular elevator at the moment. When the door opened, the wolfdarted out of the elevator and ran into the Turk's lounge. /Vincent, the shapeshifter is missing!\

End chapter two


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter three: The boys are back in town!

Vincent Valentine, sat behind his desk, today had been a day for departures from the normal, so no surprise that Alexander Diamondclaw felt like showing up again. Of course the fact that he had apparently decided to run rather than travel by some more mechanical and faster method was slightly odd. But, Alex wasn't the kind to let the times catch up with him without a fight. "Niro? How do you know that he's even missing, I haven't seen him since North Crater." Niro Rose was an artificially created being designed by Shinra to serve as an assassin, and his abilities as a Shapeshifter would have doubtlessly made him all but impossible to guard against.

Sadly for Shinra their newest little toy had ended up being aimed right at them, and hardly for the first time in retrospect. Reeve had freed Niro from Shinra's control (thought Vincent and the others hadn't found this out 'til much after the fact) and he had joined them in the Seraphim rebellion. He had also more or less jumped off the face of the planet after the battle in which they had killed Jenova. Or at least as far as Vincent knew he had.

/Yes, the Shapeshifter has vanished. He's visited me at every full moon except the last one. It took me quite some time to get here but I felt you should know./ Why Alex felt that way of course, one on hand Vincent had no clue, he hadn't been particularly close to Niro; of course none of them had been. On the other, Vincent knew exactly why Alex had come to him.

With the exception of James, Jenova beings were Jenova beings, besides Vincent and Niro had both been "made" who they were by Dr. Simon Hojo. "Well Alex, what do you expect us to do about that? Niro won't be found unless he wants to be found." At hearing Sephiroth's voice, Alex twisted around and then sank down on his ankles in a pose of lupine deference that Vincent had seem him take precious few times before.

/Silver Fang, I didn't expect you to be here!\ Alex had finally noticed that Vincent's son was present. Sephiroth nodded in a silent command to relax, and Alex did rising back up to his full impressive (for a wolf at least) height. /I am certain I can find him just fine all on my own. I feel, however, that I will need my pack's help to deal with whatever else I find. If it is able to keep the Shapeshifter from being where he wishes to be, it must be quite powerful indeed.\

------------------------------

It was very dark, and Niro Rose was very pissed, or at least he would have been if he lacked his nearly geologic patience. He walked around the cell, using his hand to feel out the edges of it, and then glared in the darkness. "Whoever you are, I trust you know that this won't hold me." The voice that responded came not from a human throat, but through a mechanical speaker, making it impossible for Niro to be sure if this was the first time he'd encountered his captor.

"I'm as far from foolish as you can possibly image! I know all about you, Rose. You were one of Dr. Simon Hojo's better creations, but he made a mistake in giving you sentience, even if it was supposedly under lock and key." Niro walked around the cell again, he didn't have his gloves on, which saved him the time of taking them off, so that he could get a good feel for it. Judging by the texture Niro guessed it was bullet proof glass, but one good punch from an arm much thicker than the ones he currently possessed should have been easily capable of shattering it.

"You really think that this place is escape proof? Well then you're in for a surprise..." They had taken his coat of ten thousand deaths, which didn't surprise him in the least, but he spared a mental sigh for it anyway. It always gave him a warm feeling to know that he could pull a rocket launcher out if he needed one. Still, once he was out of this thing, he would find out who this idiot was, deal with him, and then find his trenchcoat.

"I wouldn't recommend that. You see, the floor you're standing on is pressure sensitive. If your weight changes by more than a couple of grams over too short a period of time, then the chamber will depressurize, and all the air will be drained from it inside five seconds." Niro growled, now that was a real problem.

"Fine then, but you do realize that one way or another you're still an idiot. Even if I can't do anything, you've chosen the wrong doppelganger to mess with. You've called down the thunder, and sooner or later you'll reap the storm."

------------------------------

"What do you mean you 'need the Valar'? **I** need the Valar!" Melkore Morningstar was not said to be slightly possessive about his airship, the Valar, behind his back. What was said was that if he had been Doctor Victor Frankenstein, Adam Frankenstein would now be attending a top of the line college with a fully paid tuition even if he didn't get one gil worth of a scholarship.

As such, when Sephiroth Valentine, a man known for being able to get anything he wanted by sheer force of personality asked him to borrow the Valar, Melkore's pride and joy, the most powerful airship in the world, he hit a brick wall.

"What exactly perchance are you doing with the Valar which is so important Melkore? Throwing it a birthday party?" This might not have been so convincing a response if deep down Melkore didn't know that as opposed to christening the Valar he had taken a bottle of wine, and had it stored it in the Valar's main refrigeration unit, to be poured onto the ships deck when it was 18 years old.

"No, as luck would have it, I happen to be taking the Valar on an important trip to Gongaga on General Mircat's orders." That was the wonderful thing about having an alibi, it was like lying but without the problem of having to think it up in advance! "What is she doing in Gongaga?"

The wonderful thing about being in charge of weapons creation was that few people bothered to blame you directly (or at least they had trouble making a convincing case of blaming you directly) for whatever other people did with your creations. "Hell if I know, Sephiroth, I'm just the driver. If you want that kind of info, then you'll have to go to the source."

"We're doing a monster sweep." Apparently the source felt that it was a good time to enter the "docking bay" or what passed for it at New Shinra HQ. In reality, it was just the roof, and a fairly shoddy roof at that, the Valar probably would have caused it to cave in if the airship actually landed on it. So instead the Valar was hovering above said roof.

As for the voice that had interrupted Sephiroth and Melkore's conversation, Mirri and James Firecatwarrior had just entered the "bay" through the stairs that lead to the roof, not because they wanted to surprise anyone present (though Melkore wouldn't put it past Mirri) but because any elevators that went up to the roof had been rendered inoperable by Diamond WEAPON's attack.

Thankfully most elevators in Shinra HQ hadn't gone all the way to the roof. Otherwise, everyone would need to take the stairs, which as there were 70 flights of them, would put most non military personnel gasping for breath halfway to their offices. Still, stairs were, at the moment, the only way to get up to the roof, and probably would remain so till several other more important issues were dealt with.

Mirri of course, looked every bit the model of a modern major general complete with ribbons and trim. James trailing behind her looked every bit the peacock in full plume, with the exception of being monochrome. Sephiroth turned to glare at the two new arrivals, though Mirri drew most of his ire. "So 'General Firecatwarrior', give me one good reason why you feel you need to do a monster sweep around Gongaga, from what I remember most of the monsters that cropped up close to it could have been put down quite easily by civilians armed with handguns." Mirri smiled as she slipped right past Sephiroth to grab a firm hand hold on the rope ladder leading up to the Valar.

"Well Sephiroth, that's the price you pay for getting out of the game. While you've been gone all kinds of weird, not to mention powerful monsters have been showing up around Gongaga, and somebody is going to have to do something about it. The place isn't exactly in any position to defend itself, so we're going to go do a sweep and wipe out any we can locate." /From the air no doubt, that is how you humans prefer to hunt.\

If Alex had found going up stairs difficult in lupine form, he had apparently mastered the art a few flights down, as the wolf practically leapt out of the stairway. Mirri turned to Alex and groaned as if she had been punched in the gut. "Oh low blow, Alexander." She recovered quickly of course, since it had only been a mock wound to her pride. "Please, Alex, you should know me better. I like to do my work up close and personal."

Before anyone could make choice statements on Mirri's choice of tactics, other problems chose to crop up. A pair of dark shadows began to emerge from a few hairline cracks in the roof. Even before the shadows had finished fully coalescing Vincent Valentine's voice could be heard emerging from one. "Listen, after what I went through last time I lost you, I just couldn't live with myself if I let it happen again. Besides, running around the world is no way for a scientist to do her job."

The other blob of shadows took its time (or just wasn't at proficient) at transforming itself into something human enough to speak . "Well I, in turn, refuse to sit around, while you go flying around the planet risking your existence for kicks. You've got a family now..."

Melkore had seen enough lovers' spats to know better than even thinking about getting involved, it was a guaranteed way to draw fire from both sides. That was why what Lucrecia said next was such a poor choice of words if anyone cared to ask his opinion. "I'm simply taking a page from Melkore's book. If you want to find something that you can study, you need to go out to the field and get it."

The look Vincent Valentine gave Melkore at this point was quite universal. It was a look that made Melkore take a few well chosen steps that would position his body behind Mirri's, in case Vincent decided to start shooting more than looks. Thankfully, however much hatred Vincent currently held in his heart for Melkore, he chose to continue arguing with words rather than lead, and with Lucrecia rather than Doctor Morningstar.

"I'll personally bring you back a live one of every single damn bug we find out there. But the last thing I need for you is to go putting yourself in danger." Lucrecia might have been shorter than Vincent, but she managed to make up the difference of height with excess amounts of spirit. (Or maybe she did it with vampiric powers, it could be hard to tell at times.) "So I'm suppose to just sit in my lab waiting for you to come home possibly knitting you a new pair of gloves to pass the time?"

As he saw the two exchange verbal barbs Melkore couldn't help but reflect that this kind of thing was exactly why James and Mirri were so right for each other. Mirri was not the kind to let anyone stand in the way of what she wanted, and James could be said to have been born half pussy whipped, what with his feline ears, tail, and claws after all....

Of course that didn't mean that Melkore was tempted to go that way, it was a path strictly for those with not a single scrap of dignity. With Liz for example, Melkore had been able to reach the steady back and forth that was the basis of most marriages, and all without the hassle of actually getting married.

Sadly for Vincent, he hadn't selected a woman who understood why having a day job in which the most common unit of measurement was one you wouldn't find on any ruler (at least until Melkore had made a couple for himself, after all having a caliber measurement device just made good sense) meant that she probably shouldn't come along. "There's a huge difference between being good at your job, liking it, and wanting it to be the only thing in your life. The reason I'm able to do this job is because I know that I have you to come home to when it's over."

"So? Sooner or later I'm going to have some job that requires me to leave this place, it might as well be this one where you can look after me and give me pointers." "I can give you pointers in the safety of the Turk's Lounge. Out here you can get yourself killed, and there aren't any third chances, at least as far as I've found out."

"Then I intend to get the most out of this second one to make up for all the mistakes I made in my first, same as you." Surprisingly Melkore was not the only casualty of this conflict, it was starting to look like Sephiroth would join him in the dirt.

Needless to say, this in and of its self was a rare occasion, you just didn't wind up in situations where General Sephiroth Valentine, who happened to have a reputation for being quite a 'team player' in the army, in the sense that he was worth an entire team when he was on your side, looking like an immature schoolboy. That was exactly what he looked like at the moment, his face taking on a pale (which was saying something as the last few months had given his already pale complexion a yet greater lack of pigments) shade and his wings (which in retrospect made Melkore decidedly glad he didn't have any despite how much he loved to fly) were starting to fold themselves against his shoulders, to such and extent that the were almost wrapping around themselves.

"Yes, but I'm far more suited for dealing with whatever we find out there than you are. Not to mention I know more about how to get by in our new lifestyle than you do." "Yeah, I've only been this way for a couple of months, unlike you who jumped right into fighting for your unlife the moment you crawled out of the coffin." "I happened to have close to a decade of training as a Turk beforehand." "So those lessons you gave me haven't actually taught me anything?"

"There's a huge difference between doing this and doing that. That was about everything a Turk was taught, how to attack from the shadows, and vanish quickly, the less actual fighting there was, the smaller the chance they had of hurting us. This is going to be us looking for trouble and hoping it isn't going to be more than we can handle."

"I somehow doubt that there is anything out there that we would have trouble dealing with." "That I would have trouble dealing with. You still have trouble turning your hands into claws." "Which might just be why people make guns." "It would be more comforting if you could shoot." "You don't need to be able to with this thing, that's why you got it for me."

Lucrecia parted her lab coat to show a weapon that Melkore instantly recognized because of his long years in the arms business. It was basically the firearms equivalent of a really big rock: a sawed off, automatic, with optional modification to make the weapon belt fed, shotgun. It was impossible to think of a handheld weapon which might require less finesse unless she could figure out how to carry around a minigun.

Not to say that you should look down on someone using a big rock instead of a fencing foil, because at the end of the day there was always something to be said for pure naked force. Vincent, who Melkore knew could probably take his apparently antiquated single round "Death Penalty" and outshoot your average marksman armed with a modern sniper rifle, was not impressed.

"There's a lot more to fighting than just being able to point and pull the trigger. You need to have kinetic intelligence, knowing where you are in relation to everything else. Particularly with a weapon like that you have to be careful or you're going to end up doing more damage to your friends than your enemies." "So how exactly do you learn kinetic intelligence?" "You fight so much and know the people you work with so well that you can know what they're going to do before they even know it. I've spent a lot of time training you how to fight by yourself, but nothing dealing with fighting as a member of a group."

"Well somehow it strikes me, Vincent, that everyone here has more important things to do in their schedule than train me how to fight with them, so why don't I just learn by doing?" "Because that's how you get yourself killed. The only reason I just barely managed to get away with it was because however pathetic a source to drawn on it was, horror stories regarding vampires couldn't be so wide spread if they didn't have a grain of truth in them. It's idiotic in the extreme to think that you can be a Turk because you've watched a couple of action movies, that's the equivalent of what you're doing."

"I fail to see how I'm going to ever be able to learn fight if you don't give me a chance!" "Wait till a real milk run comes along, like picking off a bunch of old Shinra loyalists, this is going after a bunch of monsters, that supposedly could be on par with the stuff we fought in North Crater. I'm only doing this because I love you and I don't want you to get hurt."

"Okay I've heard enough!"

"Fascinating as this two vampire production of Streetcar Named Desire is, I'm going to have to bring down the curtain. Vincent, the excuse of men 'protecting women' has been used way back since the beginning of time by men who have been in charge of either religions or governments as an excuse to treat women like glass sculptures. Something to be looked at, admired, traded, and ultimately altered to however it could best suit its owner's needs or desires.

Try to do a little bit less singing your own praises for protecting her, and a little bit more teaching her how to protect herself. If you need advice, just watch James, look for the things he says, and more to the point the things he doesn't say. So as the general in charge of Shinra's armies, I say that her presence has been officially requested, and if you don't like it then since I'm the highest ranking member of Shinra's military present, you can feel free to file a grievance with my nonexistent secretary. Lucrecia Valentine, welcome to the Seraphim."

With that Mirri flipped a small black object to Lucrecia before she suddenly spun around. "Oh and I almost forgot to tip the cabby." Another of the black objects was sent flying in his direction.

He had seen military unit badges before, but this was something new. Whoever had made this thing had obviously been a very good artist. The subject of the picture was easily recognizable to any person who happened to live or have been born some place other than Wutai, it was an angel.

The whole bit, large feathery white wings, long blond hair trailing down well past the chest, and green eyes. What made the image so interesting was that like in many particular visions of heaven (a vision that Melkore bought into in this case) the angel wasn't wearing any clothes. Sadly, she happened to have one of her wings (which even compared with the real ones on Sephiroth were frickin huge) folded across her body covering her from shoulders to knees.

Despite this show of immodest modesty, Melkore still found this particular angel worth looking at for a reasonable length of time, because there was something he couldn't quite place about the figure. Or at least there was for the first few seconds, then it hit him over the head like a ton of bricks. The eyes and the facial features bore an uncanny resemblance to the person who had flipped him said token.

The blond hair had thrown him for a bit, but once he recognized the face, he was dead certain. Melkore looked up at Mirri, who was smiling at him far too smugly for his liking. "So Melkore now that you're done ogling me by proxy, why don't we all get on the Valar before someone else shows up." Mirri's words had a prophetic effect, no sooner had she said them than...

"Finally, it took me long enough to find you." Before any of them could do react Aeris Gaste Valentine exited the stairwell onto the roof, her gaze locked on Sephiroth with an intensity that could have melted metal through, and then evaporated it. "Do you know how hard it was to find you these days?" Sephiroth did look like he knew how hard it was, and his one regret was that he hadn't been able to make it harder. "I'm, sorry Aeris, things have gotten more complicated than I've planned."

"So you're going to be off on an airship and leave me in the dust? I thought you were done with doing Shinra's work." "This isn't about Shinra, this is about Niro. Alex says he's been kidnapped and the Valar is the quickest way to get out west." Melkore had spent enough time on the jousting grounds of romance to know when there was a sudden reversal of fortunes. Granted he had never seen it work for a guy instead of against one.

Aeris stood perfectly still for a moment as her mind clearly needed time to recalibrate based on the situation. "Well then in that case I suppose I'll just have to come along myself." "No! Look, Mirri is being her current manipulating self, and the last thing I need is for you to get involved in the fight she's probably going to force me into to pay for passage." "Seph, I've come a long way since we first met."

Sephiroth's advantage just went down the drain. It was Melkore's theory that women grew bigger when they were pregnant for the same reason that certain lizards puffed out manes of skin, to warn others not to mess with them. It was at this point however, that Mirri's other boot drooped, which surprised Melkore to no end, he didn't know that Mirri even had another setting in this kind of conversation.

"Aeris, considering that this is coming from me you should give it a thought or two. I'm a firm believer in the in the principle that no one who doesn't want to should end up in combat. My point is, you shouldn't be risking your child's life by putting yourself in danger. Besides, you shouldn't take pregnancy lightly, it's the task that was handed down to us by the gods since it was the only thing that could keep our egos in check." That certainly explained why Mirri was having her child gestate in an artificial womb, she like to let her ego grow like a gold fish in an oversized pond.

Still, wow, Melkore could feel the entire universe holding its breath. Up to this point Mirri had displayed the maternal instinct of a sea horse, who would guess she had a sensitive side? "So Mirri, since Melkore and Lucrecia are both going out of town, who is looking after your daughter?" Now Melkore found himself in the least desirable place to be in the universe. It was the kind of place you had nightmares about, and you didn't even have to be naked being here to make it horrifying.

Melkore Morningstar was standing directly at the very center of Mirri Catwarrior Lufkin Firecat's attention. "Good question, Melkore, who is looking after Shiva?" Melkore's heart stopped beating for a moment, he needed an answer, and he needed one fast. "Brian is!" Thank god for Brian, how many times had he gotten Melkore out of this kind of situation? It was wonderful to be working with him again.

And the only thing better than having a scapegoat for any occasion, was having a reusable scapegoat for any occasion, besides Brian was like the younger brother Melkore never had.

Then there was James Firecat of course, was the younger, hyperactive, brother who Melkore had never had, family could be weird like that. But either way, Brian could definitely "egg sit" Mirri's kid while they were away. Now that Melkore had managed to dodge the bullet, Mirri returned her attention to Aeris.

"Fine, just know that on principle I don't like you doing what you're doing. But if you insist, fine, just promise me you'll get out of the game before you get too far along." Aeris nodded and then Mirri quickly pointed to the ladder.

"Okay then, unless Niro shows up and invalidates you guys' part in this mission, let's get this show on the road. Secondly, as I'm in charge I'll go up first, and if I catch any of you looking at my tail you better have one of your own." She didn't look directly at Melkore when she said that, but he made sure to keep his eyes on the roof just to be safe.

------------------------------

Much to Sephiroth's pleasant surprise, the planning room in the Valar had been greatly improved. There were now seats in the room, along with a screen and movie projector. The new feature that Mirri was most interested in however was a military looking hat hanging on a hook within easy reach. Not to mention she happened to also have come in wielding long stick that looked like it had been a pool cue in a former life.

All of which added together to remind Sephiroth that however competent Mirri was as a commander, she clearly needed to watch a few fewer war movies when deciding what to wear while conducting briefings.

"This is our target, James load the image." James put the necessary image into the slide projector, turned it on (then took it out, and flipped the slide around so that it would be right side up) causing it to cast a picture of the area around Gongaga onto the wall of room. Mirri's pointer whacked against the map as she began her lecture.

"For those of you who don't know it, this is the town of Gongaga and the surrounding area. A couple of years back the town had an accident, and the mako reactor exploded. Now recently very weird and powerful monsters have started showing up. This sequence of events is extremely strange for the following reasons.

First and foremost, the fallout from the reactor exploding should have made its way into the local monster and animal population inside a couple of months to a year at most. So why are we only seeing it happen now? The second thing that's odd about is that no one has ever discovered exactly what caused the reactor to explode.

This all brings me to the next problem. To tell you what Reeve has told me, he believes that someone out there is running a private mako reactor. If someone is, then the run off could explain the unusual mutations. Either way, we're gonna sweep the surrounding area outside the town as shown by this map for monsters, and if we find any signs of a private mako reactor, we investigate, and should we find such a reactor, we purge it with EXTREME prejudice.

Now, to be fair, I'm sure that we all know each other, since it hasn't been that long since the Seraphim Rebellion, but I'll refresh everyone here who we are anyway. My name is Mirri Firecatwarrior Lufkin, and I'm in charge. I specialize in nasty surprises.

This is James Firecatwarrior Lufkin, and he belongs to me. He may act like a kid, but under all that... well, he's still a bit of a kid, just one that was genetically engineered to kill and be happy about it.

This fine lupine is Alexander Diamondclaw, one of the last few pure Cetra on the face of the Planet. He's is, in my professional opinion, which counts for quite a lot, one of the best berserkers I've ever met. He'll probably be the guy who charges headlong into whatever kind of fight we end up in and if we're lucky there might still be something left standing after his first pass. He also requires about as much weaponry to harm him as a tank, and of about the same caliber. Also Alex, if you could, Shinra, by which I mean I, would be very appreciative if you used that nose of yours to try and sniff out any mako reactors out there."

/It will be a pleasure to make sure any who harm Gaia come to a painful end, Black Fury.\ Everyone in the room except Lucrecia had grown used to the way that Alex could "speak" without moving his lips or actually generating any sound. Mirri certainly didn't let it break her stride even if it had been a while since she "heard" it.

"Sephiroth is someone who I'm sure we're all familiar with unless you've been living under a rock with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears for the last 30 years. I say this because Vincent has already proven that simply lying in a coffin isn't enough to prevent someone from knowing about him." Not even James laughed at the joke, but to be fair Sephiroth had noticed that he must be the only commander on the Planet who didn't include some bad joke in their briefings.

"Melkore Morningstar will be our chauffer for the next few weeks, so make sure to leave a few coins in his guitar case when you leave. He doesn't exactly excel in combat, though he has very deep sleeves, and specializes in pulling nasty toys out of them for the rest of us to use. During the mission he'll be staying on board the Valar, in radio contact with me, and in command of this ship's firepower.

Knowing Melkore, he has no doubt taken being in Shinra's good graces again as an excuse to outfit this thing with even newer and more destructive weapons. This ship was built to be a literal flying fortress, which basically just hovers over an unlucky city, and blows it away before dropping SOLDIERS on it to capture anything that is left standing. So it isn't exactly in its element on this mission, but frankly I won't turn down having this kind of firepower on my side in any conflict.

Aeris Valentine, you'll be our main spotter for finding out if we've got some idiots trying to make moonshine mako out here. Vincent Valentine here, would be my choice for any stealth mission he can move like a ghost, mainly because he's a vampire. Also, he could probably balance on the Valar's railing and shoot someone on the ground through the eye with that gun of his.

Finally, allow me to introduce the last member of our group, Lucrecia Valentine. Like Vincent she's a vampire, so let's all try not to get paper cuts, and be careful when we shave. Her current weapon is a belt fed auto-shotgun, so let's make sure not to be standing between her and what she's aiming at. Other than that, feel free to make it up as you go along, just don't forget Mirri's rules of warfare. Number one: first kick some ass..."

**OWAN: Ok, so it's been a long time, and a lot of you have probably lost interest. Here's hoping that our actually updating once in a while will be enough to rekindle it.**


	4. Chapter 4

Twinkles in the night sky

Chapter four: On the road again.

It felt good to be on the ground again for James Firecat. To be fair, this was not some kind of sibling rivalry with his "sister" the Valar, because James liked flying. It was just that while watching the passing scenery was quite interesting, something else was currently making its way through James' mind. The Seraphim, who fit his concept of "family" to a T, or would, if there was a T in "family".

The time he had spent in the Seraphim Rebellion had probably been only a bit more than a month, but when you were as old as James (about a year, give or take) a month was a long time. More to the point, that month had been the time when his desire to go everywhere and do everything had been closest to being fully sated. The months that followed had been wonderful because he had spent them with Mirri, but as he had discovered somewhat quickly, being in the military was sort of boring when there wasn't a war going on.

What slogging through the rain, fighting, killing, bleeding, seeing his companions killed off (okay saying that he had seen that was a bit of a lie, but for a while they had thought Sephiroth was dead), had failed to accomplish, the bureaucracy had. James would have never have guessed that war required so much paperwork, though it did do a bit to explain why the Seraphim Rebellion had been able to succeed.

That's why he was wondering if he should talk to Mirri about getting himself honorably discharged in a couple of months. Of course, on the other hand, James hadn't ever not been involved in some kind of structure, but he thought the civilian lifestyle might be just the thing for him. Civilians could live where they wanted, sleep the hours they wanted, and eat the things they wanted. Of course these were frighteningly new concepts to James who for the most part been brought up to do all those things on Shinra's command, which was why he had followed Sephiroth commands on them for a while.

Now he was following Mirri's, which as they were married was at least socially more acceptable. Give him to his first birthday (he spent a lot of time wondering what he would get for presents) and he would probably be able to figure out all those things for himself! Sentience was a tricky thing, and you had to grow into it, that's what James thought. But that wasn't the main reason he wanted to be a civilian, as a civvy he didn't have to worry about protecting himself from anyone who tried to kill him.

Apparently the army could actually do far less to protect itself. Despite being made up of armed people, it was better for attacking others than defending itself. It was like one big target when you thought about it. As a civvy James wouldn't have to spend nearly as much time looking over his shoulder, because being a military man meant you were a good target.

James didn't like to be a good target, he liked to be a bad target, one that jinked, twisted and twirled. And since there had yet to be any particular law against his gloves (funny how with Melkore and Mirri sitting so near the top of the New Shinra hierarchy the issue of his gloves had been ignored) he could keep them after he stopped being a military man. That was a good bargain, you weren't a target, and you could fight back!

But that was an issue for a later date, James had to keep his mind on the mission or the mission would make him keep his mind on it. As he had discovered over his "years" the mission could really bite you in the tail at times. Speaking of "the tail" that was one of the things he liked about being on top of the world. Mirri had instructed the tailors to design him two sets of military pants, one for dress (whatever that meant, since it still included pants) and one for combat.

Not that this was unusual most people had two different sets of uniforms, but with James there was quite a clear difference between them. His uniform for fighting had a special hole in the seat of the pants for his tail to come out of. Actually, not having his tail constantly stuffed down a pants leg was probably the thing he liked most about having all of Shinra's resources at his beck and call.

After swinging said tail back and forth playfully for a few moments James got to work recalibrating his mind, he had to focus. He was out here, and it was his job to look for mako reactors or unusual monsters. Something that should be fairly easy, after all, the monsters were looking for him as well!

------------------------------ ---------------------------------- -------------------------------- -------------------------------- ------------------

Sephiroth was only too glad to take part in the group that was going down to Gongaga with Mirri and Alex. This was exactly what Mirri had expected because it let him get away from his parents and his wife. Despite a pronounced lack of empathy, Mirri had spent considerable time practicing how to be empathic, in the sense of knowing what people were thinking and feeling, mainly so she could manipulate or predict their actions better.

"Alex you should shift to human, unless Sephiroth can somehow turn into a raven and perch on my shoulder, though if you can, I'm good with that to." In response Sephiroth tucked his wings into his back and adjusted his clothes slightly to hide them. "Funny. You did make sure to send that note to Zack's parents about his death, right?" Before Mirri could give Sephiroth the affirmative, Alex shifted to human, and Mirri found herself without words to speak.

At least other than, "Alex what the hell happened to you?" Gone were the jeans, t-shirt and combat boots he had favored since the escape from Junon, the shaggy hair held in a loose ponytail by a simple leather thong, and the thick beard that stemmed more from an apathy towards razors than from any particular preference for the look.

In their place were black slacks and flats, a slate grey dress shirt and a dark green canvas duster that fell to mid-shin. His coppery hair was pulled back sharply into a tight braid, clasped with what Mirri recognized as a Cetra glyph. His beard was now neatly trimmed and had a stripe about ¾ the width of his mouth cut out of it from nose to neck, giving even his fully human face a feral cast and a suggestion of his lupine muzzle. The clothing was all clean, well made, and well maintained, although Alex had spared himself the impression of excess domestication by growing his canines into small fangs and his fingernails into short, thick claws. All together, it wasn't a bad look on him, but it didn't seem like the sort of thing he'd have done on his own.

He took one look at the way Mirri was unable to keep herself from smiling, and mumbled something that even Mirri couldn't catch.

"Say that again?" Apparently even Sephiroth couldn't catch it. Alex had the look of a condemned man who had refused a blindfold, and was now regretting it.

"I said, Morning Glory happened to me." Mirri was not normally the gossip prone type, but as Alex himself would say this bone was too full of marrow to stop chewing.

"Which means what exactly?" An annoyed growl started deep in his throat, but when he spoke again, his voice had softened from his customary guttural rumble. It was still a rough bass, but the growl was behind his words rather than in front of, between, and all around them.

"It means that after I mated with her, and while we were waiting for the pups to arrive, she told that my human form should be just as 'regal' as my wolf one. She'd somehow gotten an image of what humans with status dressed like, all gems and silks and pointless frills; I was able to convince her that humans of means preferred a more subtle approach these days, thank Gaia." Mirri had seen something similar to the way Alex was dressed, but she couldn't put her finger on it at first. Then it struck her- it was a matter of theme, not structure. "Nice clothes, personally tailored, simple enough to be easily maintained and loose enough to kill in. If you're not careful, people will think you're a new brand of Turk." Alex looked at Mirri, he did not snarl at her, gentlemen did not snarl, he simply smiled and ran his tongue over one of his fangs.

"While I may be a berserker, a blunt instrument, Gaia's wrath personified and all the other stereotypes of my tribe, that's not what all Garou are. As the only living being raised in and fully aware of Garou culture, I have a duty to present a more complete image. The less people see us as savage animals, the harder it'll be for some worm to convince them we should be put down." Alex barked a harsh laugh at the incredulous look on Mirri's face. "I may not _enjoy _politics, Black Fury, but I've lived a very long time, and it's impossible to do that without picking up a little bit of everything."

"I take it you learned to read, also?" Alex shrugged, Mirri would admit that he was getting better on his human body language as well as his controlled shifting.

"I learned how to read a long time ago; I just don't normally have much use for it. But Morning Glory said that I wouldn't be needed for another two moon spans when the pups are born. So I've had nothing but time to spend on the things that will convince Morning Glory to let me mate with her again." Mirri snickered into her glove barely managing to muffle it in time. Well, at least she hadn't giggled. When she finally got herself under control, she still couldn't stop smiling.

"Welcome to marriage, now get off your tail, go make something of yourself, and don't come back till you're bringing home the chocobo meat. Who says that animals aren't just like us?" Alex shrugged again and tapped a claw against his teeth.

"If it was just bringing down Chocobos, I wouldn't be dressed like this. Unfortunately, it's hard to convince Morning Glory of my progress when so many of the concepts I'm working with don't really exist to wolves. Wolves don't do politics, so I wouldn't even know where to start explaining it to her." The idea was out of Mirri's mouth almost before the thought had finished processing.

"You can borrow James, if you want. He can speak wolf, he gets human rules at least a little better than you do, and he's very good at simplifying." Sephiroth allowed a smirk to slide onto his face at Mirri's words.

"So tell me Mirri, is that your solution for every problem you can't deal with, use James?" Mirri glared at Sephiroth as they started towards Gongaga, but it was hard for her to miss that Alex had changed his gait, as well. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought it was a synthesis of his customary lope and Sephiroth's measured stride…

"Well, now that you ask, yes. Considering how many things I can take care of myself, that's no insult to James. We just happen to have a set of well matched skills, anything I can't trick and take advantage of, James can deal with by sheer naivety. Being able to successfully handle problems by pooling resources is the trademark of a successful marriage. I'm sure you'd agree with me if I said that you and Aeris specialize in different fields."

Not particularly eager to discuss his marriage with the company smartass, Sephiroth changed the subject. "This is the first time in months James has been operating on his own, isn't it? You're not worried he might get distracted?"

"It won't really matter if he gets distracted, he's got a penchant for stumbling into things by accident that would take anyone else days to find on purpose. He's got his flares; one for if he gets lost and realizes it, one for if he comes across monsters, and one for if he finds a reactor. What's there to worry about?"

"Fine, so tell me… General, what's our job in town?" "We reestablish Shinra's presence in the city. If I had my choice, we'd be arriving with a new mako reactor, or something else to supply this place with power. We don't have that, so we'll have to make due with what's on hand. So when we get there Sephiroth, stop looking so flighty, unfurl your wings and preen like the bird of prey you are." Sephiroth glared back at her.

"You first, you're the one in charge, so that means you walk point. Fun isn't it?" Mirri reached into her jacket, and pulled out a small five pointed star.

"Are you so sure about that?" Alex stopped short and leapt backwards, he knew what wolves at play looked like, and this was no game to get involved with. Mirri gingerly held the star as she looked at Sephiroth. Sephiroth began to take several very long steps away from her.

"I promised Aeris that I wouldn't become a Shinra general again. Mirri, are you really going to make me lie to my pregnant wife?" Mirri knew that her smile didn't stop at her lips, it extended all the way to her eyes.

"It'll be a learning experience for her. Because unless you're as blameless as James, sooner or later you'll lie to her, and you're no James. If she knows to be looking for it, then she'll be more likely to see it."

With that, Mirri charged. Sephiroth might have been out of the game for a few months, but obviously he had found time for training. He seemed to effortlessly slide past Mirri's arm, and adjusted his coat as he did so. The black wing shot out of his right shoulder blade, knocking into Mirri's hand, causing her to lose her grip on the star. To be fair, that was a new trick, and she hadn't been expecting it (you didn't get many chances to practice fighting people who had wings) but she recovered quickly.

While she was doing it however Sephiroth leapt over Mirri, and managed to grab hold of the star in midair, and the moment he landed he was driving it towards Mirri's jacket. Mirri countered with a kick that had enough length on it to reach Sephiroth's hand, and knock the star out of it. It flew through the air, and landed on the dirt strewn path, Mirri and Sephiroth's eyes met for only a moment.

"Last one to it wears it." Instantly they both were off. Sephiroth was faster than Mirri, but she was closer. It looked like they would reach the star at close to the same moment till Mirri went from full speed to zero in an almost impossibly short amount of time and stuck out her leg directly in his path. Sephiroth went flying and not in that controlled kind of way that he had practiced with his wings. Mirri left a small cloud of dust behind her due to her sudden stop, but she was back to running almost as quickly.

Inactivity had done nothing to dull Sephiroth's reflexes, and he easily reached out, snatching the star as he flew by. He landed in a handspring, and flung the start at Mirri before he had even come to rest. Mirri ducked, allowing the star to fly over her and lodge in a tree trunk. Sephiroth saw that he had no chance of reaching it before Mirri could rip the golden star from its new resting place, so he headed in the other direction, vanishing into the foliage. Mirri pulled the star from the tree, and began to look for her target.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are..."

"As you wish!"

Sephiroth swung down from an upper branch of the tree, that Mirri had pulled the star from, slamming his boots into her face. She held onto the star however, and even as she stumbled, her mind reeling she waved the star in Sephiroth's (or the three Sephiroth's who she currently could see) direction like a priest using a holy symbol to try and keep a demon at bay.

Sephiroth knew she was momentarily off balance however, and pressed his advantage, charging her and knocking her to the ground. Even as she rolled over on the dirt path Mirri still held onto the star jabbing away at Sephiroth with it.

------------------------------ ---------------------------------- ----------------------------------------- -------------------------------------

Both of them sat still, not really panting for air, but playing at it. As it was, other than scrapes and burses, they might have dirt on their clothing, but they were unhurt.

"Damn it Mirri, you're going to have to be able to hold me down before I let you make a liar out of me where Aeris is concerned."

Sephiroth's wings flapped slightly with each breath he took.

"You put up a good fight old man." Sephiroth was not too tired to take another swing at Mirri, SOLDIERS didn't get "too tired" even after a pitched battle, but he had more respect for her than that.

"I did more than that, I won."

"No you didn't, look: no star on my chest."

"You didn't get me either."

"Then..."

"Where did it end up?"

Sephiroth and Mirri both looked around to see if the star had managed to get itself lost somewhere. As a matter of fact, it had managed to get itself lost somewhere very obvious. Alex (who had reverted back to his natural form) looked back at them with a look that was hard to read in his golden eyes, and the star of a Shinra general digging into his fur. Mirri managed to get coherent words out first.

"Would you look at that? Pin the star on a wolf. Could be a great party game."

/Don't bet on it.\

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There was a lot of arguing and a lot of explaining. A lot of "Morning Glory" this and a "Morning Glory" that, along with plenty of "Black Fury" this and "Ragabash" that. In the end, however, Mirri managed to win out.

"Besides Alex, you're the only person in this group of three who looks suitably like a general, because your clothing doesn't have dirt caked into it at the moment. Don't worry, you just stand back and look suitably impressive, me and Sephiroth will do all the talking." As she said so, Mirri put an arm around Sephiroth's shoulder, and Sephiroth felt more than the weight of Mirri's hand on his shoulder.

"You conniving bitch!"

Sephiroth snapped around holding up the second golden star that Mirri had removed from under her jacket. Mirri waved a finger before his eyes reproachfully.

"A female cat is a queen. Besides, we're all in this together." As she spoke Mirri removed a third gold star from under her jacket, and attached it where it would be visible in plain sight.

"See? Now instead of having one three star general, we have three generals, which shows just how much Shinra cares about this place." Sephiroth made a noise of contempt under his breath, and though she refrained from nodding her agreement, Mirri didn't hold it against him.

She agreed, Old Shinra hadn't cared about this place, and though Reeve doubtlessly did, he had other problems to deal with, like figuring out something other than mako power that worked.

"I can't believe we're the first forces that New Shinra has sent out to this place." Mirri refrained from letting Sephiroth's bad mood infect her.

"Smile for the cameras Sephiroth, it may be par for the course, but once again we're making history."

------------------------------ ---------------------------------- -------------------------------- ---------------------------- --------------------

Back in Midgar, the New Shinra personnel were burning the midnight oil, and they weren't the only ones. Midgar was known planetwide as the City that never Sleeps. Certainty, Reeve "Shinra," the man who tried to keep it all running, never seemed to sleep. At the moment, he was placing a piece of paper on his desk very, very slowly and, with equal enthusiasm, reaching for the nearby intercom.

"Reno, come to my office, now."

Almost instantly the response came and it was exactly what Reeve suspected.

"What did I do now, Mr. President?" A long lifetime of living in Shinra taught you that you were guilty until proven innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Nothing, I just really need a drink, and someone to talk to. Actually, make that several drinks." In retrospect, the best thing about rehiring Reno was that not only did he know where all the bodies were buried, he knew where the wine casks were as well. Though Reeve knew there was a mini-bar in the Turk's lounge, he was also sure that the Turks had their own distillery somewhere in the building, he hadn't found it yet but Reeve was quite sure it existed. The Turks had always been a branch apart from the Shinra tree, and Reeve was sure he hadn't curtailed even half of their unreasonable privileges, for the simple reason that they weren't recorded anywhere. It didn't take long at all for Reno to enter Reeves office with a bottle in either hand.

"You didn't specify what you wanted Mr. President, so I just brought some Corel 32', good vintage for any occasion, be it a wake or a wedding, and my favorite corkscrew will have it open in no time!" Reeve took the bottle and the corkscrew that Reno pulled from his pocket and passed over. For a brief moment Reeve shuddered as a thought struck him, but he kept his mouth shut and didn't ask Reno why this happened to be his favorite corkscrew. His mind could provide him with several unpleasant answers, chief among them involving ruptured human eye sockets.

"So, Mr. President, what exactly is the problem?" Reeve picked up the paper and passed it to Reno, before taking the bottle and taking a sip from the bottle. Reno scanned it fairly quickly, before tilting back his glasses, taking the corkscrew and using it to open the other bottle and took a drink from it.

"Oh boy. Well, I can't say that I've been setting the best example, but we do have a problem." Reeve took another drink, he usually abstained from liquor and even a few sips from something Reno liked was enough to make his head swim. But that was a good thing compared to the alternative, at the moment he didn't mind having a long distance relationship with reality.

"Yes, Reno, we are in trouble, isn't it nice how many different disasters waiting to happen the Old Shinra regime left for us?" Reno was evidently figuring that if a cat can look at a king, a Turk could drink with a President, which was exactly what Reeve needed.

"Like moving into a building and finding C4 strapped to all the supports." Reno took a much larger swig than Reeve, which made him wonder if the Turk didn't have as many bottles concealed on his person as he normally had weapons.

"This had to happen sooner or later, and we're the poor fools who end up holding the bag. The world is finally waking up from being under Shinra's thumb, and realizing what a mess they left. And, as Murphy's version of luck would have it, they hit on the problem that no amount of money can solve. If there is a way to get the mako and Jenova cells out of SOLDIERS, we haven't found it."

Reeve looked at the one sheet of paper that troubled him more than anything else he had read during his time at Shinra. Wonderful, oh so wonderful. It was politely worded, but quite clear on its point. People had realized what a danger SOLDIERS represented, and had asked for Reeve to turn over to the city of Midgar a list of all known recipients of SOLDIER enhancements and their status.

There were a collection of various signatures, and none of them struck him as important, but then who was behind it would probably have buried his signature about halfway down the list. That would be how Reeve would have done it when he wanted something taken care of and not to be known it was his idea.

It didn't ask for the list to be turned over to anyone, just posted in some public place where anyone who wanted to could see it, wonderful. If the argument had been a bit more fanatical maybe Reeve could had ignored it, but it was too logical to toss aside, too insane to implement.

"You know what this will lead to, don't you?" No matter how little common sense Reno seemed to have, he hadn't risen to his current position by simple luck.

"Of course I do! It starts with this, then because you shut down the SOLDIER program -smart move by the way: The world has room for only so many of us- the stuff used to make them becomes a hot black market item. People can finally live forever, or so they think.

Of course getting the treatments are an exact science, so bing, bang, boom, people start dropping dead all over the place from mako poisoning. Except instead of low life junkies like with other drugs, it's important rich people, 'smart' people, and the economy goes down the drain. Then people blame us because we came up with the process, and blame SOLDIERS especially. I can already hear the angry mobs with the pitchforks, hurling a battering ram against our castle door." Reno recited this apocalyptic prophecy with complete certainty and lack of care.

"So what are we going to do about it?" The answer came back with blinding speed.

"Drink. That's why you called me in here, ain't it? We're going to drink, and watch humanity do to itself what some giant alien couldn't. If there was anything we could do to stop it, you'd be doing it, but there isn't, so you called for me instead." Reeve made a mental note that if he could remember anything tonight, remember that Reno had a shockingly accurate grasp of human nature.

"So we're screwed."

"Six ways from Sunday, sir. Face it, we all are, we're dead men who don't have the decency to realize that people tossed our coffins into a lake for a reason. So we open them back up, swim to shore, and go back to work. Hell look at my boss, he wrapped one arm around the coffin and brought it ashore with him! The only difference between us is I'm one of the lucky ones. I know I'm dead, but I'm not quite ready to lay down yet. You're still wondering why people keep hanging air fresheners on your ears." Reeve looked at Reno, but he did not take back his statements.

"Oh and Mr. President, here's a tip, it works better if the stuff left in your bottle is large enough that you don't need a microscope powerful enough to see the OH, trust me I know." Reeve looked at his bottle and realized that it was empty, how had that happened? Reno pulled up his pants slightly revealing a pair of bottles currently resting in the ankle holsters that every Turk wore even around the office. Reno drew them with spectacular ease and handed one of them over to Reeve.

"As I said before, we're dead meat. That's why I signed back on, because when the whole world goes to hell in a hand basket, I want to be at the very center of it. No prolonged struggle for me, I'll be the guy sitting on the warhead, and waving James' hat. You're the one who really needs a drink though, when all this is over and humanity's reduced to living in caves, people are gonna be scratching your picture on the wall pointing at it, and saying 'this is the one who did this to us!'

Me, I'm already making reservations in the underworld, I figure unless you call ahead it'll be pure hell to get a good room in the land of fire and brimstone. Maybe I can get a room across from James and Mircat, good company to spend all of eternity with." Reeve looked at his second empty bottle, Reno's humorous attitude towards eradication was just what he needed, and what he didn't want to hear.

"You know what I think, Reno? I think that we're trying to fight a glacier with our bare hands." Reno pulled a pair of flasks from his suit pockets and passed one to Reeve.

"That's exactly what you're doing, and exactly why you need me. Believe me, I've tried to court Mircat, I could have written the book on fighting glaciers with your bare hands. And you know what I learned?

The moment when you've given your all, the moment that you know you're lost, do you know what happens? Some guy comes up behind you, jumps on your back, and the glacier a little push, and then the whole thing instantly topples its way back into the ocean. That's all we can do boss, we can do this stupid thing, and hope that some guy is gonna come along and instantly make it all right. It makes you feel like an absolute idiot, but you know what, as long as you can feel like an idiot, boss, it means you're still feeling something."


	5. Chapter 5

Twinkles in the night sky

Chapter five: When someone makes a move, of which we don't approve, who is it that always intervenes?

Aeris would like to say she was used to having strange things happen to her, she'd grown up hearing voices in her head (they'd belonged to the Planet) after all, but apparently spending a few months of relative serenity with her winged husband had done a lot to leave her more easily startled then usual. A few too many months without needing to use her newly discovered lycanthrope powers, or regenerate bullet wounds. A few too many months without Alexander Diamondclaw speaking directly to her mind without needing to use his non existent (in wolf form) lips. A few too many months without seeing Vincent Valentine slurping up recently spilled blood up off the floor or straight from someone's neck.

Whatever the exact cause, it lead to a moment of mind numbing fear when dark shadows started to fill her room on board the Valar, slipping in under the doorway. She was even more surprised when it wasn't Vincent who took shape from the shadows, but a woman.

Then, Aeris mentally slapped herself, evidently she'd been paying no more attention to Sephiroth's family than he had to hers over the last few months.

"Lucrecia." The woman nodded responded with her own single word greeting.

"Aeris." Then both of them found themselves prisoners of the painful silence which filled the room. Aeris was stuck wondering how exactly you were supposed to talk to your mother in law when you hadn't met her until after you'd gotten married due to the fact that she'd been dead for the last three decades.

Then the half Cetra decided that she might as well at least try to be cordial, since it was clear that Lucrecia was simply feeling every bit as tongue tied as she was rather than actually standoffish.

Still thoughts about being alone in a room with a female vampire lead to her mind running of its own will down certain lurid paths, especially when she momentarily reflected upon how close Vincent had once come to drinking her blood. She eventually managed to dispatch such thoughts with the reminder that she was no longer a hapless naive virgin in any sense of the term.

In fact a certain aspect of her lack of virginity combined with the possibility that she might need to use her powers had worried her at first, but Alex had said it would be okay for her to shift however she wanted at least until her "pups" reached their sixth moon cycle inside her womb.

This was probably because lupine gestation lasted three months less than its human equivalent did, and even though her child wouldn't shift with her, well that sort of was the problem actually. Alex had told her that back when the Garou were first getting established, a Cetra shifting to lupine form after being sixth months pregnant would cause that wolf body to go into labor and deliver babies prematurely which would often kill even a newly born Garou. It didn't always of course, but the results had a way of getting attention no matter what became of the infants.

That was why she was certain that after she reached her sixth month she and Sephiroth would be settling down for a good long time. Which was also why she had decided to come along with the group and give her husband permission to as well, this would be for Sephiroth, the combat equivalent of a bachelor party, one last wild fling.

"Thank you for looking after my son while I couldn't." Aeris suddenly snapped back to the moment, she had gotten so lost in thought that apparently Lucrecia had finally figured out what could possibly be said next between the two women.

"You make it sound like it was a chore. One thing that Sephiroth taught me is that family has nothing to do with bloodlines, and you always look after your family. Not because you have to, but because you love them, each and every one of them."

"I somehow don't see Sephiroth using those words."

"He didn't. But something that I learned from the woman who raised me was the importance of being able to tell the difference between what people say and what they mean."

"That's a skill I was rather badly lacking when I was alive. I'd be honored if you could help me with it."

------------------------------

Niro Rose had that particular kind of total calmness only seen in monks who could enter a meditative trance and thus detach themselves from reality, and psychotic killers.

Time had no true meaning to him at the moment, and Niro Rose was not the kind of person who could be broken by solitary confinement, even if forced to spend it in one shape.

Shinra had wanted him to be unbreakable, and he was hard as a diamond. That meant that Niro had all the cards, whoever this idiot was, he was far too much in love with the sound of his own voice. Sooner or later the fool would taunt him again, and give away something that he couldn't afford to. In fact, Niro could already feel the balance shifting his way.

"Your friends should know well enough not to poke their heads where they haven't been invited." Niro smiled; there it was, time to pump it for all it was worth.

"Really, and what do you intend to do to stop them?"

"That monster above ground, an abomination to the name of my mistress, will soon discover that curiosity does kill the cat." Niro didn't need to be told twice to realize that this lunatic was talking about James Firecat, and he knew what that meant.

"I wouldn't bet on it. Every single person who's ever treated James like a cat's paw has come to a painful end sooner or later. You shouldn't fix it if it isn't broken. James is good old fashioned feline. They're horrible opportunists; they look everywhere and take everything. If this lab so much a sparkles when lights hit it, then he'll find it."

"Contrary to what you believe, that's exactly what I'm counting on. Welcome to my web, said the spider to the fly..." Niro didn't respond, he could wait. He had all the time in the world.

------------------------------

James was deep in the forest now, and very glad that he had his flares on him, since he wasn't quite sure if he'd be able to find his way out of it any time soon. But that wasn't a big problem, he could deal with being lost, you just had to not let it worry you and keep heading in one direction till you knew where you were again. It was only when you panicked that things got bad. Then James saw the spider web, and that was when he decided that now was a good time to start panicking.

James had always been a bit of a closet arachnophobe (in his opinion nothing that small should be that deadly and have a will of its own) and that was when the spiders were much smaller than him. To judge by the size of the spider web James had found, he was dealing with either some very productive or very big spiders. He instantly reached into a pocket, and pulled out then green flare, a bit of help would be wonderful right about now.

He touched his tail to the back of the flare, and a moment later it was blasting off into the sky. Now all he had to do was pass the time until the Valar showed up, though that might not be as easy as first anticipated. Apparently firing that flare had drawn the attention of the current residents to the area.

Spiders were scuttling out of the trees all around him, well at least these ones looked to be almost three feet tall. Considering the HUGE web in front of him, James decided that a little back tracking might not be a bad idea. Sadly three spiders stood right behind him, well there was nothing for it. Time to make like a cat, slice, dice, cut, and otherwise dismember. "You guys look pretty funny tryin' to chase me without legs!".

Then things got worse. A thick gooey, well whatever, shot out from one of the spiders behind him. Even as James ducked to dodge it he momentarily wondered what the hell was happening. He hadn't spent a lot of time studying spiders, but the webs were supposed to come out the back, not the front! However, before James had more time to ponder anatomical improbabilities, he heard the scuttling sound of a spider making its way down towards him. SLICE!

The tree's trunk slid right off its base, no lumberjack could have asked for a cleaner cut. It fell forward, and the spider that was clinging to the underside of the tree's trunk had the joy of experiencing the same fate as many spiders the world over: being squished to death. Its limbs heaved a few last desperate jerks underneath the tree trunk and then lay still.

After pausing a moment to celebrate the demise of one of his hated foes, James took off like a shot. He darted and swerved, and made sure to throw himself to the ground whenever he heard one of the spiders make that sound (similar to chucking up a really (really) bad hairball) which signified that they were about to spit webbing at him.

A part of him pondered the possibility that at this point he was just running around in circles since all the trees really looked the same. It was a possibility no longer up for discussion when James found himself skidding to a stop before the giant web that had started all these problems, he was very clearly going in circles.

That, and the spider that had spun this web was now looking right at him with all eight of its eyes. It was not a nice looking spider, even as spiders went, and it was bigger than James, in fact, each of its eight very hairy legs seemed to be about as big as James.

Poison dripped from its mandibles, and looking backwards James could see more of the smaller spiders spinning webs behind him. Wonderful, he was trapped, it was a spider-silk cage match between him and this oversized arachnid. James took a deep breath, pushed fear out of his mind and called up everything he knew about spiders.

For starters, contrary to popular belief not all spider webs were sticky. Some of them were sticky of course, but some of them weren't, and the spider only stepped on the non-sticky ones. So if James only touched the webs where the spider stepped he would be fine.

Of course why bother with such a complicated plan when he could just slice away the top of the giant web, then it should collapse on the spider, trapping it in its own web! James slowly allowed himself to meet the vicious thing's gaze, and spoke in his best sing song voice.

"I know something you don't know!" It was a long toss for his wires, but he managed t reach the strands above the spider and he pulled. Nothing happened. He pulled again, nothing.

Lovely. The spider began to make all too familiar sounds, and there only one thing to do. James jerked hard one last time. The webs were either made of something impossibly strong, or impossibly sticky preventing his wires from reaching them. Since they could not pull the webbing loose the reverse came true. The gloves flew right off of James' hands, and he only just managed to leap away from the ball of webbing the spider spat at him.

Armed with just his paws, James looked at the spider, unsheathed his claws, and attacked. The spider might be bigger than him, it might be stronger than him, and it might have home field advantage, but James Firecat was a more highly evolved form of life!

For example, he was readily able to observe any section of his body, through the simple process of turning his head, and occasionally his legs! The spider had no such operation, it needed none at its proper size (that size being large enough to be seen, yet easily fitting under the heel of James' shoe) where evolution was considered.

That was the difference, this thing was an evolutionary dead end, created for the sole purpose of dead ending someone else's life. James had been carefully created so that he was able to go in tune with evolution's laws and principles, even if he was rather outside the box.

It was time to teach this arachnid an important lesson in biology! James's jump easily allowed him to land on the spiders back and he instantly slashed away at the thing with his claws.

James could respond to attacks from behind him by simply turning around, the spider had no such ability. It might have eight legs but none of them bent in the right way to let it swat James from his current position.

The spider half screeched, half growled in irritation and pain, and then it did the only thing it could to get rid of James, it flipped over and let go. Thus, James found himself rapidly hurtling towards the ground, which in his experiences was not a good thing. So he jumped, grabbed a web that the spider had been "holding onto" and felt the satisfactory sag of it under his body's weight.

Then as the spider went flying (make that falling) past, he leaped out on it, again to land on its underside and dig his claws into it. But this was a different game, the spider's limbs could now rise up and strike its own chest.

James had a momentary flash back to his very first real fight as a Seraphim, and then he jumped again. The spider's legs slammed down on its chest, and if James hadn't taken part in some emergency maneuvers, they would have slammed down on him. He grabbed the same strand, and waited, if the spider wanted to keep hitting itself that was fine with him.

However, the creature wasn't the stupidest thing on the Planet, and so eventually it rolled over to hiss up at him. Said hiss was followed by it firing of webbing at him, and James let go of the strand he was balancing on to avoid it. That his shoes happened to land squarely in the middle of two of the spider's eyes, well that was just gravy.

From the spider's eyes James jumped onto its back and made another gash in the thing, trying to hit the same spot he had his first time. In irritation the spider made for its web and began to scuttle upwards, clearly intending to throw James off that way. At this point James' tactical and practical side took over, and that was why he found himself holding on for dear life with his arms around the huge spider's neck.

Having no other choice about what to do in the situation, James hauled himself upwards, went over the thing's head, and with his legs wrapped around the spider's neck, and shoved his ungloved paws into a different pair of the thing's eyes.

It was hard to say who got the worse end of that deal, but it was clearly an experience that neither of them wanted to repeat, if for different reasons. The spider used only six legs to hold onto the web, while it's two upper middle legs got to work attacking James and trying to break his hold. The blows did not come from the best possible angle; if they had they would have broken James' legs. As it was, they simply knocked James' legs upwards and left him with nothing to hold onto. So once again, James Firecat found himself in freefall.

So James did the only thing he could, he grabbed his gloves. They were just hanging there in midair after all, and since they belonged to him he might as well get some use out of them. They wires stretched still attached to them, and a few feet from the ground, they stretched as far as they could. Suffice to say after what happened next James would never have any fear of bungee jumping, if he ever tired it. He was now going back through the air, in the opposite direction.

Sadly for James all that goes up must come down, and if it goes up a second time it comes down a second time. Sadly for the spider James had gotten pretty good at directing how his body moved while he was in free fall or free climb. Thus when James came down, his shoes smashed through yet another pair of the spider's eyes.

He had hoped that his feet might even shatter the thing's skull and smash its brain, but you can't always get what you want, perhaps because spiders lack skulls in the traditional sense. So instead, James pulled his feet free and tucked his body into a roll. Part way down the spider's back, he vaulted off. This did not rank up with his best ideas.

The spider twisted in its web with amazing dexterity and shot a blast of webbing that hit James full in the back. The added weight made him drop like a stone. The good news was that he stopped falling before he hit the ground, the bad news was that the reason for this stop was that the spider was holding onto the strand of web that was wrapped around James above his midsection. It was going to eat James unless he did something. The Valar might be arriving soon, but that was a long shot, James had a slightly shorter shot. When he was almost touching the spider's mouth he smiled again.

"I know something else you don't know!" James' tail was not pinned to his sides by webbing, and it slowly probed into his pants, wrapped itself around something and then pulled that something out. It was a red flare. Then he adjusted his grip slightly pressing the tip of his flaming tail against the wick of the flare.

"Ready for some fireworks?" James tail was strong enough to steady the flare over the short distance. It went right into the open mouth of the spider, then exploded. James had closed his eyes ahead of time, but merely feeling the way that the thing exploded over him was painful enough. Then there was a prolonged feeling of weightlessness, and finally the sharp bump at the bottom of the fall.

Well that was the end of that, it should be safe enough to open his eyes finally.

"Having fun yet?" Vincent Valentine, was descending from what looked like a rope of solid shadow and looked down at James with, well it was hard to tell exactly what his expression was conveying.

"Depends, how long have you been there?" The web was uniformly hard as rock and James could neither break nor wriggle out of it So rather than struggle, he just applied his tail to the web, as was his standard procedure for how to get out of any restraining device. His ever burning tail flame proved a useful addition yet again as the stuff began to melt right off.

"I've been watching for a while, I would have killed that thing before it could hurt you, but it looked like you were enjoying yourself."

James shrugged, jumped, managed to find a safe strand to balance on before using his tail to burn away the strand of web his gloves were wrapped around.

"Well, it was pretty fun, up until I got hit. Your sense of direction is better than mine, could you give me a hand? I'd like to find my way out of here before midnight.

Vincent almost instantly had his rifle in hand and fired. James spun around and saw a spider that had been about to leap out the trees and attack him lying very dead with a hole cleanly through its head. By the time he turned around Vincent was already starting to "zip line" back up his rope, with speed that should only be possible when you were going down.

"See if you can look after yourself for a little while longer, I'll get Melkore to take care of things."

------------------------------

Niro felts the waves of joy radiating as they grew strong, and he smelled another victory for his side.

"Congratulations, whatever you just did, it didn't work, and now they know you're here. You better have a very impressive backup plan, or else pretty soon James Firecat is going to be doing his victory dance over your dead body, literally." The voice was filled with spite when it filled the room.

"As a matter of fact I do." Niro could hear the gas entering his cell, if he had wanted to be melodramatic he could have tried to hold his breath, but one whiff told him it was simple sleeping gas. He inhaled, and felt the world go blurry, but he smiled, because no one could outrun cause and effect.

------------------------------

Vincent entered into the Valar's cockpit and started talking before he was fully congealed. "Whatever is going on down there, it isn't natural, unless nature started building spiders in 50 to 1 scale." Melkore rubbed his hands together, what to do in this situation is quite clear.

"Well with all that forest down there to hide in, it could take a while to find whoever is responsible. So it's time to show off the Valar's newest weapon, and bring this hunt to its conclusion! All right nature, get ready to for a little Feng Shui, Melkore Morningstar style! I love the smell of napalm in the afternoon, smells like victory." There were few people in the world that had ever gotten talked down to on the issue of concern for life by vampires, but Doctor (Psychics) Doctor (Chemistry) Doctor (Biology) Doctor (Engineering) Melkore Morningstar was apparently one of them.

"Wait a minute, you are seriously going to napalm the forest?" Melkore crossed his arms in irritation, this was why he had become an arms merchant; you typically didn't have to worry about having a sparkling personality. "Yeah! It'll be a controlled burn so we make sure nothing human gets hurt, and then, whatever is going on down there will stick out like a sore thumb!"

Sadly, despite being quite able to convince people that his weapons were sound with a demonstration, he often had trouble with just a description. "What exactly is 'controlled' about napalming a forest?" Melkore's finger drifted lazily over the various buttons for various armaments that the Valar possessed.

"It's simple! As soon as the napalm starts to really get it burn going, I create a firebreak with a few of the regular missiles! The napalm blazes itself, out, and nothing sentient gets hurt." "What about James?" "If the worst should happen, then he can die knowing I was very disappointed in him." Before the Vincent could raise another argument, Melkore pushed the "N1" button, and then a second later the big red one to fire the selected missile.

------------------------------

The Valar had always had a makeshift conveyer belt for loading missiles, practically every armed airship had one. Melkore had just advanced the concept, the conveyor belt rolled both ways to load whatever kind of missile was needed. In addition to the normal missiles it carried, the Valar now had several new ones.

Mako tipped missiles for antipersonnel use in wide open areas, high explosives for light but fast moving targets, armor piercing for heavier targets (this time Melkore was quite sure the Valar could go toe to toe with a WEAPON if there were any left) and of course its standard formula.

The conveyor belt rolled along till the first napalm missile was in place (the ship carried several of every type for each launcher). Then the fire command came, and the missiles (all of which had the same launch device) fired. The Valar hadn't uploaded them with a targeting program, so each missile just went straight ahead, and exploded a few yards above the ground, spraying their cargo as they went. Napalm coming into contact with oxygen instantly lit itself on fire, and began to burn with even more ferocity as it consumed the local foliage.

------------------------------

James watched the world around him burn and couldn't help but smile; he could always count on his friends to come through for him.

End Chapter five

**Alex is going to murder Melkore. A lot.**


	6. Chapter 6

Midnight Nirvana 6

Chapter six: Turning Japanese

FN: Computer data reconstruction works nothing in real life like it does in this fic, but what can I say, sometimes you just have to get a little creative...

"Whoever did all this was smart; I have to give them that." Finding the lab had been almost laughably easy in the wake of the Valar's pyrotechnics. There was only one patch of green "grass" left with everything around it scorched to ash, and such things tended to raise suspicion. Vincent had been the obvious choice to get the trapdoor open, and no one was willing to take the trouble to restrain James from being first through the door when it opened. The trapdoor led, as doors hidden in the ground tend to, to an underground tunnel, which eventually opened up into a massive room that was packed wall to wall with computers. Expensive looking and effective looking computers. Melkore had almost cried as he discovered that each and every single one of them had gotten a bullet right in the CPU.

When he had first looked at them, he broke into a monologue that would have done the hero in a Shakespearian tragedy well. "Would you look at this? The 210, 260, 550, so many memories in these machines, and now look at them! Deprived of life by the cruel hand of fate!

What songs they could have downloaded, what music they might have streamed, and now they are dead! What foul villain could have preformed such an act? What perfidious fiend might have the gall to perpetrate such a massacre of knowledge! How could any civilized man allow this kind of horror to visit the world? Such answers escape me!" At this point he had laid a hand on one of the shot computer's still perfect monitors.

"Sleep mode, my dear friend, sleep mode. I shall track down the reprehensible waste of matter who did this to you, and I shall not rest till he has come to an end befitting one such as him."

James had broken into an impromptu round of applause, and Melkore had bowed. Now that they were all present (or almost all, Lucresia was about looking for any spiders still alive that she could take back to Midgar), they were each drawing their own conclusions from what they had found.

"Shooting the machines would be faster and more surefire than deleting the data on them, but this is the first time I've seen it done so well." Mirri was busy inspecting the machines with a disdain for the dead that Melkore had not been able to muster.

"Normally the guy takes an assault rifle, and sprays from one side of the room to the other. Whoever did this wanted to make sure that they didn't leave us anything we could work with." At those words, Melkore almost tackled Mirri as he rushed to the machines.

"I refuse to allow someone who would do something like this to win like that! I will not rest till I can get these machines to hum with life!" It was hard to tell if it was Melkore's love for machines or his desire to finally put one over Mirri that prompted him to this announcement, but Melkore Morningstar rarely went back on his word(well, okay, he frequently went back on his word, but not once his pride was involved). Filled with this new determination, he approached the machines, no longer with the despair of a bereaved relative, but with the drive of a surgeon. A surgeon facing a particularly viral type of appendicitis that had somehow moved from the appendix to some other vestigial organ, like the gall bladder, or the spleen.

Vincent meanwhile looked at the one possible passage out of the laboratory, other than the one that led up. "I don't think even I can go through this, no idea where it would lead, how long it is, or what I would find on the other side..." The hallways had been completely collapsed. Whoever had done this, it hadn't been a last minute thing; more likely it had been wired with explosives before hand. They all searched the lab and came to the same conclusion: everything had been sterilized with clinical precision.

No handy journals, or anything at all in writing. Nothing to give any clues at all. The machinery was the closest that came to a clue, but for the most part it was just that: machinery. At most it could be said to be up to date, and have been used recently. Sephiroth shuddered slightly, his wings fluttering as he did, being underground didn't agree with him.

"This place looks like my... like it could have been Hojo's lab." James, meanwhile, was allowing his curiosity to roam wild, and, by bizarre recurring whim of fate, stumbled onto something important.

"Check it out guys, pay dirt!" Mirri, after brief examination of his find, rewarded James with a scratch behind the ears.

"Good job James. This is just what we've been looking for; we've clearly got some mako drilling equipment here. Melkore, Vincent, I trust one of you happens to have the explosives we'll need to collapse this entire place like that tunnel?"

Vincent reached into a pocket of his Turk uniform and pulled out a string of plastic explosives that couldn't have logically fit in the space Vincent had pulled them from. He smiled, up until the point that everyone was looking at him with raised eyebrows.

"What? It's a trick I've been practicing, it has to do with compaction of mass, as with turning into shadows. Now then, if you would lend me a few hands, I can have a big red button ready to be pressed in a couple of minutes." Sephiroth was the first to grab a block of the plastic explosive, and he smiled as he did so.

"You don't become Shinra's top general without learning a few things about demolitions. It'll be my pleasure, so long as I'm the one who pushes that button." Mirri took a block of the explosives, and then waited, watched, and swatted James' hand away when his patience broke and he reached for one of them like a child for a piece of candy.

"Trust me James, you'll do more harm than good, and I mean the bad kind of harm, not the good kind of harm." Melkore held up the procession in the end, needing help to move the computers out of the lab, but however demeaning Alex felt it was to use his war form simply to transfer large quantities of "Weaver garbage"(as he insisted on calling it, much to Melkore's horror), a half ton of solid muscle did tend to render questions of carrying capacity more or less academic. Once the computers had been lifted onto the Valar by winch, Vincent handed a small box with a red button to Sephiroth with utter solemnity.

"Here you go, son." Sephiroth looked at it, and for a moment the only thing he could think of was the one thing that had changed about Gongaga since he had last been there. In the middle of the town there was now a large statue of Zack, standing with his sword, looking alert and the words "Zack Halycon, he did his job" carved into the base of the statue.

Reeve must have designed it, come and go, regardless of their intentions Shinra suits would never understand a SOLDIER's lot in life. If Sephiroth had been consulted the statue would have born an image of Zack with a girl in each arm and the words, "Zack Halycon, the ladies loved him." Sadly the person who had probably best known the fallen warrior had not been consulted on the issue of how to properly show respect to him.

Sephiroth was living in a world where even kind people gave a town a statue instead of the power plant it needed to make something of itself. That was the way of the world at the moment. Sephiroth thought about that, and he though about how as child he had promised himself he would change the world when he had the strength.

If he didn't have it now then he never would, it was that simple. Sephiroth pushed the button and felt the reassuring rumble as underneath them the lab exploded. Then he tossed the remote back to Vincent.

"Thanks. Come on, let's go back to town and tell them they won't have any more problems with monsters. Then we'll go back to Midgar, we all have things to do." For Sephiroth, he knew the thing that he finally had to do was to meet his mother in law. It had to better than just trying to avoid setting foot in Midgar till she died, and Aeris would probably be proud of him.

* * *

And so, when they got back to Midgar, Sephiroth boldly went off to face the dangers of meeting a mother in law who he hadn't met prior to showing up at her door with her pregnant daughter.

As for Vincent, he faced something equally dangerous, bad timing. He flinched involuntarily as he disembarked the Valar to find Reno waiting for him.

"Hey boss, I got the stuff for Firecat!" Mirri and James happened to be standing right behind him, and Mirri was just a little quicker off the starting line to the same conclusion.

"What stuff for James, Vincent?" "Yeah, what stuff for me?" Vincent looked at Mirri and James, and then back at Reno, and felt like he was starting to sweat blood.

"You had better come inside, it'll take me a while to explain..."

* * *

By the time Vincent had begun laying out the situation to James and Mirri, Lucresia was already back in her lab. Her search had not been in vain as she had been able to find a still living oversized spider, and after ripping its legs off, taken it back to the Valar. Said spider was now lying flat out on her desk ready to be examined.

The thing had long ago given up spitting impotent fury at the world (in part because of the tranquillizers that it had been given) so now the perfect time to do a blood analysis. No need for a syringe or test tubes, that was certainly one of the advantages of her current condition. She simply bit down, trying to ignore the taste of the, it was hard to tell if it was skin or fur on the spiders neck.

Pushing the readily flowing liquid around in her mouth she quickly deduced it's compounds, the sedatives were obviously present and... Lucresia tried to scream, tried to spit out the liquid in her mouth, but it clung to her lips like tar. Normally having a blocked airway shouldn't have been a problem for a vampire, but this wasn't normal conditions. Lucresia tried to scrape the stuff out with her fingers, but her hand to eye coordination was leaving her as quickly as her consciousness.

* * *

Most people on getting back from a long journey would have likewise returned to their place of work. Melkore Morningstar was not most people, he was much smarter than most people. He had not climbed to the top of Shinra's executive ladder without learning a few tricks and using those tricks to knock his opponents several rungs down said ladder when the situation called for it.

But he also knew other things. Things like how the amount of work waiting for you when you got back from a vacation increased exponentially with time. The best way to handle this problem was to go nowhere near where the huge pile of work was waiting for you. If you waited long enough the pile of work would literarily decompose into mulch, or at least a pile of assignments that it was too late to get started on.

So instead of going to his office, Melkore did one and a half of his three favorite things. He was following a flight of fancy, sort of meeting with a hot girl, but sadly not drinking heavily.

Lucresia Valentine was a different kind of woman than Mirri Firecatwarrior when catalogued in Melkore's mind. Mirri fell into the that category of "hot, but wouldn't have him" a situation so many women Melkore had met fell into, and she still fell into it. Lucresia on the other hand was "married to someone you don't want to piss off" and thus the thought process stopped right then and there. With Mirri, for example, Melkore would have wolfwhistled if he saw her dancing regardless of how huge a diamond ring she was wearing.

But that wasn't what mattered, what mattered was the other mental calculation Melkore had done on the way there. If anyone should ask him exactly what he was doing, he had an excuse ready. The spider's webs had been able to resist being cut by James wires. Those wires could, according to design specs, slice through just about anything. Those things it couldn't were incredibly heavy, like a building's foundations or Masamune. The spider's webs however had apparently been light as "spider silk" as the saying went.

Thus, whatever those webs were made of should make excellent body armor, and Lucresia happened to have the only live spider they had captured. So if anyone asked, Melkore would tell them that he was on his way to get a sample of the spider's webbing. Now that was a clever piece of thinking worthy of the director of Shinra's weapons program! Sadly, even as he was having this brilliant thoughts, his body was doing something not so brilliant.

It was taking him to the place he was thinking of. The first rule about having a good excuse was never be near where you said you had to be, otherwise your excuse turned into (shudder) work. As soon as Melkore became aware of his present location, right outside Lucresia's door he prepared to do a quick about face and saunter off confidently.

However, from inside the office Melkore suddenly heard the sound of someone choking. Not play choking with coughs, and screams, really choking, the way you did when you could not get anything through your windpipe.

Despite what Melkore kept telling himself, in reality so deep down that it would take industrial digging equipment to reach it, he actually was a decent person. Some part of him so minuscule it could only be measured with scientific equipment so sensitive that only Melkore himself could create it, Doctor Morningstar was a decent human being. Some scrap of soul that must have gotten stuck in the Devil's teeth, and while he had been cleaning them Melkore snatched it up.

Or, more likely, Satan had spat it back at Melkore with a smirk and a "just so you'll never be happy with everything else I gave you" before leaving in a puff of sulfur. It was a very small, very naive (and thus in Melkore's book, very stupid) part of him that just wanted to make weapons so horrible that no one would dare use them (or any other weapon) for fear that both sides of the conflict would be wiped off the face of the Planet.

The rest of Melkore of course wanted to make those weapons, and use them so that he could scorch his initials (or maybe his full name) onto the Planet and then point those same weapons at his foes and say "Do you feel lucky, punks?" But this small part of Melkore's mind which Melkore thoroughly wished to reject, was very much like a certain part of his body, that while small in comparison to the whole, held great sway when it spoke.

Neither spoke on every single occasion, but when they did, instant obedience was to be the order of the day! Thus Melkore with his entire sane mind wanting to turn and slink away found himself thrown once more into the task of heroing. Out comes his ID card, and it went swiftly into the door, Lucresia hadn't "locked locked" her door, thus anyone who was a department head (like Melkore) could open it.

It slid open, and Melkore rushed in, the logical part of his mind telling him what to do. Lucresia's body was cold, but when dealing with vampires, that didn't really tell him much. With calm surgical precision that Melkore would never again feel in his life, he put his arms around Lucresia's chest, carefully oblivious about what else that was nearby he could have been putting his hands on.

With his mind busy telling him how stupid he was being, he pulled Lucresia to her feet, normal people could do serious damage doing what he was about to attempt without a great deal of training, doing it with near-SOLDIER strength was recipe for disaster.

Sadly Melkore was done in his by own ego, which told him quite clearly that if he had wanted to save lives instead of end them he could have done just a good job at it, and he was about to prove his point! So while Melkore's mind was completely aware of how stupid he was being, his hands weren't. He tugged sharply in what he would later consider one of the most smoothly executed Heimlich maneuvers in the history of modern man.

The mass of sizzling green and red that Lucresia spat out a few moments later was entirely liquid in nature, and looked like the worst mix of internal products that Melkore had ever seen. This was bearing in mind that when Melkore had been in college he had seen his own digestive system produce some very revolting things when he was kneeling before the porcelain alter.

It was only now that Melkore's brain finally caught up with his body, and he did the sensible thing, in the less than sensible way. He let go of Lucresia, and did nothing to slow her decent to the ground once she left his hands. During those seconds he was busy making sure that his all of limbs and digits still reacted to their normal call signs.

Once he was sure of this, he got down to see how Lucresia was doing. Her chest wasn't rising, which either meant that she still had some obstruction, or that she was fine; it was hard to tell, vampires didn't need air to facilitate the breakdown of blood that their bodies ran on, and so they suffered no ill effects from lack of oxygen. However, they still did need to expand their lungs when they were going to speak in order to project the words outwards.

All of which meant that a vampire when it was asleep or unconscious did not have the steady rise and fall of a human chest (they also never snored) which only showed up when they were conscious, because inhaling and exhaling was a hard habit to break even if it didn't even accomplish turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. Before Melkore would even consider opening Lucresia's mouth (my, what big canines you have) to see if any of the blockage remained, he saw it, the chest expanded. Melkore suddenly felt very relieved, now that he had succeeded, he didn't have to worry about being punished for failure(department head or not, it was hard to shake instincts from Old Shinra).

Lucresia had no down time between being unconscious and being fully aware, a common vampiric trait that, if it wasn't for that little detail of the sun being up, would have made them the very definition of a morning person. "Thank you, Melkore." Melkore took a few steps away from Lucresia, he knew enough about the 'fairer sex" to be more than a little aware of how many ways this could still go wrong.

"No problem, do you mind if I ask what went wrong, I didn't know vampires could get indigestion." Lucresia looked at the glob of red and green she had produced and shuddered slightly.

"Think about hot sauce." Melkore did, not bothering to ask why. "A drop, maybe two, makes a bland meal taste better. But too many drops, and you end up with something that scorches your throat and make your eyes water. Mako is sort of similar for vampires. A little in the blood makes it taste better, too much... too much can be as deadly as bullets tipped with it. Those things, they have so much mako in their blood, that they might as well not have any blood at all." Melkore nodded happily, trying to edge towards the door out as unobtrusively as possible.

His sense of possibly impended doom was not helped by the fact that Lucresia had a hungry look in her eyes. With humans you starve a cold, feed a fever, with vampires, you fed whatever the problem is and it got better. Even if you just tossed your last meal, you should be having another. Which in turn meant that Lucresia would be looking for blood, and Melkore didn't intend to be doing any unscheduled donating.

Thankfully Lucresia apparently had an icebox full of donated blood packs under her desk that she turned her bloodlust towards while Melkore made his escape. Closing the door behind him, he slowly caught his breath.

"You look like hell, if you don't mind me saying so. Sir." The startled scientist turned to his second in command and sincerely wished he would wipe that annoying smirk off his face. "So would you if you were in my shoes Brian, trust me on that."

* * *

Reno could rely on Firecat being an easy sell to Boss' (and by inclusion Reno's since he had gathered the supplies) idea, Catwarrior would be the one who insist on exposing the whole thing to the unforgiving coldness of logic.

"So let me see if I understand this..." The way that Mirri spoke was reminiscent of an auditor asking you how you could spend fifty percent of your income on alcohol.

"You two want to put _James_ on the Wutaian throne, or whatever they have that passes for it?" Boss was brave, but he was smart enough to know better than to try and take Mirri full on when she was in one of her moods.

"Well, it's like this. Godo Kisaragi is reaching a certain age, when a man starts to think about finding an heir." "Your age, Vincent? I'd like this to be as specific as possible." That was a low blow if Reno had ever been in a room where one was delivered, but then Mirri was an expert at fighting below the belt.

"Actually, Godo is between 10 and 15 years younger than me, but when your life is measured in only three digits, these things creep up on you much sooner. Anyways, since Godo isn't going to remarry, he's not going to end up with an heir the normal way. That said, sooner or later somebody still has to be ready to step up and take over when he dies. In turn I think we'd all prefer if it was a somebody who didn't think they could restart the war with Shinra. Nobody wins that one except for the buzzards, so we need to put someone on the throne who will do what's best for everyone, and can you think of anyone better than James for that?"

That was a valid point. It took a real nice guy like Firecat to make sure that they had both survived Diamond WEAPON's attack. Granted, Reno would be willing to admit it might just have been professional courtesy. Or even more likely, because Catwarrior told him to, and regardless of whose side you were on, you listened to what Mirri had to say.

"Okay, that explanation makes sense, but if James has trouble passing for a human, how is he going to pass for a Wutaian?" Reno stood up, it might as well be happy hour, because now was his time to shine!

"That's where I come in, prepare to be amazed!" Reno opened the metallic suitcase, revealing various objects within. He carefully picked up two of them, and passed them to James, who hadn't uttered a word since the meeting had started.

"Put these on." He did, and Reno nodded to himself, the contacts were spot on. "Brown contacts, totally eliminate mako glare, just the thing for the SOLDIER who doesn't want to be recognized as such." Reno, feeling remarkably like a traveling salesman crossed with a fashion consultant, pulled out the next item.

"Black wig, specially designed so it works like a bald wig but with hair. You tuck it down like this, gives the appearance of natural hair color, and completely covers 'unnatural' design of your ears. Even better, in this particular style it's impossible to see where your actual ears should be! Finally, here's a face mask, I suggest you wait to apply it till you need it, but designed to give someone completely unfeline facial features." Finally, Reno removed the last item from the suitcase. "And last but not least, a Wutaian robe, cut to the measurements of one James Firecat, according to the Shinra 'we know everything about you' mainframe." Mirri slowly stroked her chin, and looked at James wearing the results of Reno's preparation.

"Reno, this idea must have driven several prominent breweries into the red, because apparently you weren't drunk off your ass when you came up with it. But the choice is still up to you, James." James looked around the room, thought, batted idly at his ear (or at least the black hair that now covered his ear), thought some more, and spoke.

"Well, in the words of eternity, king me!" Reno got up and did his victory dance, he had done it, he had beaten Mirri in an argument! Sadly the victory dance he had planned for so longed, was ruined by Mirri causally thrusting out her leg, sending him to the floor.

"You know, your victory dance is just like James'."

* * *

Brian Lane was the adaptable sort. You had to be to have survived Shinra through all three phases. He had made money during its oligarchy phase, he had hidden with the best during it's maniacal rule by fear empire phase, and he was still employed in the well meaning tyranny it had turned into. Still, there are things he didn't always understand.

"What are you doing?" It was a reasonable question, weapons designers normally didn't wear welder's masks in their offices. Nor did they have blow torches.

"I'm going to be saving lives Brian!" For a man with a welder's mask on, Melkore's voice came out surprisingly clear, but he still lifted it up and took it off momentarily to explain himself.

"This is one of the computers we found, the 329, and whoever the monster who did this to it wasn't quite as smart as he thought he was." Brian didn't correct Melkore on assuming that the person was male, evil scientists types were a well respected male stereotype.

"He put a bullet in it's processor and hard drive, but he didn't do a damn thing about the memory sticks!" Brian was familiar enough with the concept of memory sticks not to be surprised. They were little strips of computer chips, that added to a computers memory when inserted into the computers mainframe.

"If, I'm not mistaken, this mainframe will still have surviving memory sticks. If we can get them out, and put them into a new computer, we can get the first few clues to tracking down our foe!" With that Melkore lowered the welder's mask. Brian gratefully saw that there was a spare one on his desk, and put it on. This was not by far the strangest situation in which he had carried out a conversation with Melkore Morningstar.

"But won't the data be fragmented?" The bright light of a welding torch flaring to life filled the air.

"It'll be fragmented all to hell, but we get enough memory sticks from enough machines, and random chance will strike in our favor!" The machine began to let out a whine like a tortured beast as the flame bit into it, making Melkore scream to be heard.

"REVEAL YOUR SECRETS TO ME, SPIRITS OF DATA BYTE PAST, SO THAT YOU MAY HAVE YOUR REVENGE ON THOSE WHO DELETED YOU!"

The weirdest things in the world could make Brian Lane feel comfortable, this was one of them. Melkore Morningstar was hard at work, and he always got to the bottom of the things he cared about.

* * *

The door to Sephiroth and Aeris' temporary quarters flew open with a resounding crash. Sephiroth stalked into the front room, flinging his dress uniform jacket into a corner and himself into the large, comfortable chair that had been specially reinforced for exactly this kind of day. Aeris followed him in with an amused smile and was about to remark on the surprising durability of the wall when her husband spoke for the first time since they'd left her mother's house.

"Well that was lovely. I think I only drew a little more fire from your mother than I did during the final battle of the Wutai War, you know, the one where I charged right at them all by myself." He slouched back in the chair, his wings spread out to either side and his forehead resting on his knuckles.

Aeris sat on the arm of the chair and began massaging his temples. "Oh come on Seph, cheer up, you'll get used to her eventually. Besides, she was quite taken with your wings."

"Tell her she can stuff a pillow with them and give it to me as a delayed wedding gift." Despite his vitriolic words, there was no real force behind them, and his eyes had started to drift closed.

Aeris chuckled softly and leaned over to peck him on the nose. "Aren't you feeling chipper today? Besides, it was important, now at least my mother doesn't think I'm insane."

"I have no doubt of that, next to my family just about anyone looks sane."

"It had to be done, but don't you feel glad now that it's over?"

"I'll give you that, I suppose she didn't take it well when you told her that you were a lycanthrope?" The soothing fingertips on his temples suddenly stopped. Sephiroth's eyes snapped open and he looked over at his wife. "Aeris?"

"I, uh, haven't told her yet, actually."

Sephiroth arched an eyebrow, amusement dancing in his eyes. "You don't think that's a bit hypocritical?"

Aeris donned a playfully defiant expression. "Of course not! Hypocrisy is wrong, and I'm your wife and therefore always right."

"Okay, no more talking to Mirri."

* * *

"Hm..." James was standing before a full length mirror, and Mirri, Reno, and Vincent were all examining him very keenly.

"So, how exactly do we get... this, on the throne of a nation? It's not unimpressive, just without the cat ears, and matching eye and hair color, it's just sort of, bland." Reno looked at James and carefully stroked his chin before responding to Mirri's comments.

"Getting him on the throne is actually going to be easy Catwarrior. Since boss put me on the case, I've been cramming on the subject of Wutai like I haven't since finals. Gudo has made things easy for us, whoever can defeat the five gods gets to be his heir." Reno might be calm about it, but that comment made James' ears rub up against the bottom of his wig. They didn't break through though thankfully.

"Five gods?" Reno shook his head and put a comforting hand on James' shoulder before he could freak out any more.

"No, Firecat it's nothing like that. The five gods aren't actually deities, they're Godo's right, left, two other types of hands men, and himself. It would be like Reeve saying that he'll make someone president if they can beat boss, Catwarrior, Morningstar, and boss' girl. Anyways, the five gods each have their own fighting style, it's, power, speed, magic, weapon, and, well, everything if I remember correctly. So James has to beat them, and do so without any weapons other than his bare hands, so he can wear gloves, but no wiretricks." Mirri began to examine Reno as if he was a time bomb that might explode at any time.

"Seriously, how do you know so much on the subject?" Reno tried to draw himself up impressively, and would have been more successful if under close inspection, his uniform wasn't missing several buttons that had been replaced with staples.

"Just like you Catwarrior to believe that men are incapable of being highly civilized." Vincent coughed loudly and glared at Reno, smiling to show his fangs.

"I don't believe it, because I have the expense report you filed for your week of vacation last month." Reno wilted under fire from both sides.

"Fine, I read the story off a bottle of wine happy?" The stares did not show a flicker of departing any time soon.

"A bottle of beer." The glares grew stronger, and Reno's voice took on the qualities of a condemned man before a priest.

"All right, all right! I read it off a box of sake, which is a combination of container size and product I'd suggest against any of you ever purchasing. Happy?" Vincent gladly patted Reno on the shoulder and spoke with false camaraderie.

"Only so long as you can live with yourself. Remember, I happen to actually be Wutaian. Even if I just got a splattering of culture as I grew up, I probably know it better than anyone else in this room." James was fairly sure the phrase was "smattering of culture" but since no one else cared to correct Vincent he didn't step forward. Mirri went back to looking at James and thinking.

"We can't directly translate his name into Wutian, James Firecat is a dead give away no matter how you slice it." Vincent nodded and looked James up and down again before shaking his head, then nodding again.

"Wutaians are big on highly descriptive last names, 'Valentine' is a translation of something that in Wutaian is... 'Passionate lover' if I remember my own family history." Vincent paused for James, Mirri and Reno to do quick double takes before jovially continuing.

"Anyways, I think we could get away with 'Flametail' as a last name, I'm not sure how close it is to a proper Wutain last name is, though I think we could bluff it." "James 'Flametail'?" Mirri was skeptical to say the least.

"James is too eastern, too Shinra. Julius? No that won't work..." James suddenly realized that he knew the answer already.

"Bastet Flametail?" Now it was his turn to have six pairs of eyes on him.

"Bastet, that could work sounds appropriately mystical. Where did you hear it James?"

"I heard someone important use it once."

That was true, and James didn't need to go into any greater detail. Reno looked him up and down one more time and gave him a thumbs up.

"Bastet Flametail, looks good. Wonderful, Wutain peasant, smacks around higher ups, bing bang boom, he's gonna be king. Just like every other single story you've ever heard." Vincent proceeded to give Reno's ponytail a good firm yank to get his attention.

"Yes Reno, but we're eastern capitalists, we believe that whoever dies with the most toys wins, and that any person can come up with a great idea, become rich, and live happily ever after. We also have proof of it, all things considered, you're living the Shinra dream. But they're much less flexible, they like their heroes to be knights, well samurai, guys who were already well off and enter on a shining chocobo. So we can say that he's a noble." Mirri took a step away from Vincent and shook her head.

"I could see this working for a peasant, but doesn't Godo know all his nobles?" Vincent shook his head and smiled.

"Nope, that's the beauty of it. Wutai has always been rather fragmented, its 'empire' runs along the entire island, there are doubtless towns that he's never visited and nobles that he's never met. The best part of it is that he does look like he was too young to fight in the Wutaian War, so that's why his fighting prowess hasn't brought him to greater attention yet." Mirri slowly nodded, and there was a gleam in her emerald eyes.

"Yes, but if he's going to be a noble he has to act like one. Fortunately, I know just the person to help with that."

* * *

"Alexander, meet Reno, Reno, meet Alexander, you haven't been formally introduced. Granted, Alex may consider trying to kill each other a proper introduction, but humans typically don't." Alex took one look at Reno and scoffed, his mane shaking slightly.

/Ah, yes, the Bone Gnawer who smelled of chocobo piss.\ Mirri didn't bother to tell Reno that this was actually a compliment from Alex. The fact that he'd assigned a particular tribe to him mean that Alex recognized Reno as an individual rather than a mindless worshipper of "The Weave", or society in general.

"I'm going to be impressed when you explain this one, Catwarrior. Because it's going to take a lot of explaining to connect a talking wolf with making James look like a lord." Mirri smiled as she ran a hand along Alex's fur.

"Simple. Alex, can you teach James to act like you do in human shape?" Alex was as doubting of his place in this mission as Reno was of it.

"Teach the Ragabash how to be a proper alpha? Can you teach a cat how to climb down?" Mirri continued to rub Alex's fur, counting on her experience with James that though animals didn't give in to flattery, physical contact in the right place was worth much.

"I don't need you to teach him how to be a leader. I just need you to teach him how to look like a leader. You know, casual swagger and bravado, flinging testosterone around with every gesture, that whole bit." Alex looked at the way James was dressed, and caught on fast.

/If it's a game of human "nobility" you're playing, I can't promise success, but I will do what I can to make a wolf of this kitten.\

* * *

Niro sat alone in the darkness, and did some mental calculations; it was time.

"You know you'll never get away with this." It took some skill to get the words out, Niro was sounding like an overly dramatic hero and he knew it. However, overly dramatic heroes wouldn't exist if their actions didn't work some of the time.

"What makes you so confident, shapeshifter?" Niro didn't smile, he was too professional. Hook, line, and sinker, he had this idiot eating out of the palm of his hand.

"Because, all by himself, James Firecat took down whatever you had working in the last place." Evil would be a much more successful cause, if it wasn't so freaking stupid most of the time.

"That was nothing but a mistake in calculations." Yep, Niro could have tuned this guy out and not missed anything important, he was reacting exactly how Niro wanted him to.

"If you could overlook something like Shinra, then your calculations can't be worth much can they?" Humans, so pathetically ready to defend their dignity when silence would be so much wiser.

"Shinra's response came sooner and with more force than expected."

"James Firecat, one being, wrecked your entire plan. You should shudder to think what it would have been if it had been Sephiroth."

"My 'brother' spends far too much time improvising clever strategies on the battlefield to understand the importance of manipulating conditions beforehand." Niro's lip twitched, so much information slipping through such clumsy fingers.

"Then what are you doing to make sure it doesn't happen again?" It was a shame that there was no such thing as an RIQ or "Relevant IQ" which measured how well you could use what you knew. On that scale Niro would have a 300, and this guy a 50.

"They were lucky enough to stumble onto my last project before it had reached maturity. This time it can't happen, and once it is ready, Shinra will not be able to move fast enough to stop it." Niro finally allowed himself a smile, not one of happiness, but of predatory delight.

"So what? You're only safe as long as you stay underground, and who cares if you torch some town? The more you act, the more you expose yourself, and sooner or later, Shinra will hunt you down. Do you really think you can stop them?"

The sound that filled Niro's ears could have been defined as "Maniacal laughter in a can", either that or it was on a CD of standard evil villain sound effects, like creaking doors and surprisingly emotionless female voices counting down how much time was left until the doomsday weapon fired.

"Stop Shinra? My goals are nothing of the sort! Shinra is far too useful to dismantle, all I have to do is to make sure that it is properly controlled, and very soon I will be able to do just that.

Yes, very soon, once my experiments are complete, everything will be ready. In the first opening move, I'll leave my foe's kings in checkmate, and all their other pieces will become irrelevant!" It took great strength of will to keep from nodding, as Niro privately thought "that's it moron, just keep telling me everything you know" to himself. He took a moment to carefully arrange his thoughts into sentences and spoke.

"How?"

"Simple, the secret to anything in life is to know your foe's weakness. If you know where and how to focus your efforts, an entire building can be leveled by a slight tap. For example, Wutains fear the spirits of the dead. Well, I shall give them something much more tangible to fear, those of them that survive." Niro nodded to himself, what he didn't realize was that knowing your foes weakness wasn't much good if you didn't know your own.

"I'll be leaving you soon to oversee the first move, I do hope you won't miss me."

"Oh don't worry, I won't miss you. Ever."


End file.
